Sunday, January 08, 2006

2005 Arts Top Ten

1. Mysterious Skin: Director Gregg Araki outgrew his ‘enfant terrible of queer cinema’ pigeonhole with this devastating, poetic nightmare of a movie.

2. Sigur Ros live at Hamer Hall.

3. The Laramie Project: Presented by The Act-O-Matic 3000, this play about the 1998 murder of gay youth Matthew Shepard was simply staged yet utterly devastating.

4. Page 8: Indigenous performer and composer David Page brought the house down with this autobiographical show at the reinvigorated Malthouse Theatre.

5. Basic Training: Khalil Ashanti’s one-man show at this year’s Melbourne Fringe made me laugh, cry, and rejoice in the human condition.

6. Little Black Bastard: Another one-man show, this time at Midsumma Festival, another indigenous performer; another night I left the theatre with tears in my eyes and joy in my heart.

7. Stay Young: A marvellous exhibition exploring masculine beauty at the Centre for Contemporary Photography by local artist Lyndal Walker.

8. At Swim, Two Boys: The smash hit of the Dublin Fringe Festival, this Welsh production of Jamie O’Neill’s marvellous novel gave me a new appreciation of physical theatre.

9. Everything Is Invisible: Magic realism and an aquatic circus live on stage at the Melbourne Fringe.

10. The Colony: Nick Mangan’s solo exhibition in September at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces.

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