The Weekend Edit
Posted on
What’s on in Canberra this weekend? Our Weekend Edit has you covered.
As we enter a COVID-normal era, we’re fortunate to enjoy most of the things that make our life in Canberra so wonderful.
Help keep Canberra safe and strong by checking in with Check In CBR, physically distancing, practising good hand and respiratory hygiene, staying home if unwell and getting tested if you have symptoms.
Taste Local Festival at Canberra Centre
Credit: Ben Calvert.
After the year that has been, Canberra Centre wanted to give the opportunity to local businesses to showcase their talents to its customers.
The Taste Local festival is a month-long celebration of local producers and talents at Canberra Centre. Enjoy unique experiences of blending workshops, tasting adventures, masterclasses, live music and more.
Canberra Centre has partnered with local wineries and distilleries to offer you the opportunity to discover their produce at Canberra Centre.
Pop-Up bars
Every Friday evening throughout the month of May enjoy a complimentary drink and nibbles in Canberra Centre’s cosy set-up before finishing your late-night shopping in the centre.
Sip on a local wine or a freshly made cocktail and relax in their exclusive pop-up bar while enjoying live music from local artists.
Every Friday evening from 5-8 pm | Cost: Free
Workshops
Whether you’re a bonafide oenophile, a cocktail lover or a cheese enthusiast, make sure you book your spot to one of Canberra Centre’s workshops to experience Canberra’s regional produce scene like never before.
Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 May: The Canberra Distillery – Mixology Masterclass
The Canberra Distillery is a small batch distillery with a passion for local flavours and the creative process. They take pride in handcrafting fine spirits from only the essential raw ingredients.
The team at the Canberra Distillery will take customers on a Spirits journey where they will discover the ins and outs of manufacturing spirits. Customers will also have the unique opportunity to taste some of their award-winning products.
Attendees will also be provided with some delicious snacks supplied by The Lazy Grazer. The Lazy Grazer sources Canberra’s best local products for their customers such as Pialligo Estate Smokehouse award-winning meats, locally baked bread, and artisan cheese.
This workshop will run on Saturday 15 May from 2 – 3 pm and Sunday 16 May from 2 – 3 pm.
Ticket cost: $20 per person.
Secure your spot now to The Canberra Distillery Masterclass here
Happening Friday, Saturday and Sunday 7-30 May | Visit the Canberra Centre website for the full program | Cost: $20 per workshop, includes tasting, food and giveaways
Happening 7-30 May at Canberra Centre, Ground Floor, City Walk, next to R.M Williams.
See canberracentre.qicgre.com/Campaigns/2021/05/TasteLocal for more information.
A German Life
In the Australian Premiere of this highly demanding 90-minute solo triumph, Robyn Nevin plays Brunhilde Pomsel, an unassuming woman with good shorthand skills who, almost by chance, came to work in Joseph Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry.
Pomsel struggled to make ends meet as a secretary in Berlin during the 1930s, her many employers including a Jewish insurance broker, the German Broadcasting Corporation – eventually Goebbels – before she emerged from the rubble near Hitler’s bunker waving a white pillowcase to the approaching Russian troops in April 1945.
Innocent or culpable? That’s the question at the heart of Christopher Hampton’s searching play, which was compiled from testimony of the then 103-year-old for the 2014 documentary A German Life. One of the last actively involved witnesses to the rise, fall and aftermath of the Third Reich, Brunhilde is intelligent and likeable, honest and credible. She doesn’t hide her youthful ignorance at the regime’s atrocities, her awe at finding herself at the heart of power, nor does she show any false remorse.
Her refusal to think too hard about what was going on and focus instead on her own life, raises confronting questions for contemporary audiences. As social catastrophe creeps closer and only united action can stop it, how do we recognise that moment? How do we seize it?
Happening 11-16 May from 7.30-9 pm at Canberra Theatre Centre.
See canberratheatrecentre.com.au/show/a-german-life for more information.
Text/ure performance with Oriana Chorale
“Poetry and music are sister arts. So are poetry and painting. It’s as if the eye and the ear were related through poetry” (Edward Hirsch)
Text/ure is a cross-media, interdisciplinary project straddling poetry, art, and music. It is a collaboration between one of Canberra’s premiere a cappella choirs and local poet and artist Sarah Rice who sang with Oriana Chorale for many years, and will be returning to sing Soprano with them for this performance.
With support from ArtsACT, Sarah Rice commissioned six leading composers (all with ties to Canberra) to turn her poem ‘If I Could Have Given You A Note’ into six compositions to be sung by Oriana Chorale. The six composers are Dan Walker (conductor of Oriana Chorale), Judy Clingan, Sally Greenaway, Quin Thomson, David Cassat, and Phil Batterham. Sarah Rice then created artworks in response to each of their songs, and these drawings will be projected on the large screen behind the choir during the performance.
As Dan Walker says; “choral composition provides an incredible opportunity to give a poem new life in a meaningful and respectful way.” It is this giving of new life to one art-form through the materiality of another that motivates the project. What was of particular interest to this project was the realization that words like texture, tone, colour, shape, and line are all used across media, ie in poetry, music, and visual art.
The Text/ure project will produce a number of significant outputs – the creation of new poetry, visual art-work, and compositions – as well as world premier performances of the pieces. The final step in the process, the poems Sarah Rice wrote in response to the artworks, will be documented in a book to be published by editor Shane Strange at Recent Work Press.
As composer/conductor of Oriana Dan Walker says: “I am very proud to say that the choral landscape of this country has been shaped largely by projects such as the one you’re undertaking: that is, new works written specifically for amateur community ensembles”.
Happening Sunday 16 May from 3 pm-4.30 pm at Senior Hall, Canberra Girls Grammar School.
See TryBooking for more information.
Harriet Schwarzrock: Spaces between movement and stillness
Photo via Facebook.com/PortraitAu.
‘The heart is often regarded as our emotional centre. Working with this form allows me to contemplate many aspects of being.’
Luminous alone, the myriad tones and permutations of spaces between movement and stillness also echo the boundless forms of love in the autumn-winter exhibition, Australian Love Stories, at the National Portrait Gallery.
Harriet Schwarzrock’s new work explores notions of emotional processes and their physical manifestations. ‘From the subtle yet essential electricity within our bodies, I am fascinated by this interplay between the invisible and the visible, between our extraordinary similarities and differences.’
In spaces between movement and stillness, the artist has embraced science and experimentation to create visual wonders: glass, inert gases, and electricity combine into an array of organic forms, producing a captivating field of colour and movement. ‘Sometimes they have a warm glow, much like an aurora contained in a bottle; in others there are lightning-like lines meandering around the form. Although the gases are invisible, when excited by electricity they reveal subtle effects and differences.’
The creation draws reflections on the role of the human heart as our central, exquisitely responsive ‘engine’. When we’re relaxed, the heart beats at a slow and steady rhythm; when excitement takes hold – for example, in the first throes of true love – the cadence might crank with the beat of a wilful, wild machine.
Showing until 1 August 2021 at the National Portrait Gallery.
See portrait.gov.au/exhibitions/harriet-schwarzrock-2021 for more information.Raiders vs Eels
Australian Love Stories
Wesley Enoch and David McAllister, 2020 by Peter Brew-Bevan.
Family, friends, fanatics and foes (and everything in between!).
Reconnect and reflect with a new major exhibition, Australian Love Stories (in real life!) and explore love, affection and connection in all its guises. From the enduring to the forbidden, romantic to platonic, the unrequited, obsessive, scandalous or creative. Swoon over more than 200 artworks from across photography, painting, works on paper, small sculpture and an immersive glass installation.
Showing until 1 August 2021 at the National Portrait Gallery.
See portrait.gov.au/exhibitions/australian-love-stories-2020 for more information.
Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery
Jacopo Tintoretto. The Origin of the Milky Way. c. 1575. © The National Gallery, London.
Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London draws exclusively from one of the greatest collections of European paintings in the world.
This unprecedented exhibition includes 500 years of art in 60 paintings and comprises the largest group of works ever to travel outside of Britain in the National Gallery’s 192-year history.
Botticelli to Van Gogh features 55 of the world’s most famous and admired artists from the fifteenth to the turn of the twentieth century, including Botticelli, Titian, Rembrandt, Vermeer, El Greco, Velazquez, Goya, Turner, Constable, Van Dyck, Gainsborough, Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh.
Exclusive to the National Gallery of Australia—only in Canberra
Showing until 14 June at the National Gallery of Australia.
See nga.gov.au/masterpieces for more information.
Piinpi: Contemporary Indigenous Fashion
Seedpods dress, 2019, Grace Rosendale, silk organza, elastic and sequinned fabric, Hopevale Arts and Cultural Centre and Queensland University of Technology. Model: Magnolia Maymuru. Photo: Bronwyn Kidd.
This stunning exhibition shines a light on Australia’s leading First Nations creatives and a design movement that is fast becoming a national fashion phenomenon.
Featuring the work of Indigenous artists and designers from the inner city to remote desert art centres, Piinpi highlights the strength and diversity of the rapidly epanding Indigenous fashion and textile industry.
Exhibition organised by Bendigo Art Gallery.
Showing until 8 August 2021 at the National Museum of Australia.
See nma.gov.au/exhibitions/piinpi-contemporary-indigenous-fashion for more information.
Magic of Marion: 150 Years of Marion Mahony Griffin
Happy Birthday Marion Mahony Griffin! Join the National Capital Authority and other National Cultural Partners as they celebrate a year of Marion Mahony Griffin in the national capital.
This year marks Marion’s 150th Birthday, a woman that played such in integral part in architectural designs across two continents.
Marion is known to have produced some of the finest architectural drawings in Australia and America but was also instrumental in the award-winning design plans with her husband Walter for the design of Australia’s Capital, Canberra.
From walks to lectures, launches to talks, see the full program at nca.gov.au/marion.
Various events happening until 10 August.
See nca.gov.au/marion for more information.
Make Your Own at Canberra Glassworks
Create your own artwork with one-on-one guidance from a highly skilled Teaching Artist at the Canberra Glassworks.
Make your own paperweight, bird, tumbler or vase in a short one-on-one session from 20 to 40 minutes long.
Saturday or Sunday sessions available at Canberra Glassworks. Book online at canberraglassworks.com/create/myo
