Artspace has welcomed the NSW Government’s commitment of over $5 million that will see The Gunnery in Woolloomooloo – Artspace’s home since 1993 – transformed into a state-of-the-art facility with expanded exhibition spaces, increased artist-in-residence studios and a greater connection to the local neighbourhood and Sydney Harbour Foreshore.

This significant investment in The Gunnery will ensure the legacy of the landmark building as the destination for visual arts in NSW and highlights the important role of the arts in fuelling NSW’s cultural and economic recovery following the impact of COVID-19.

The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra has announced its 2021 NSW Season, a diverse program of six live concert series, with a further Melbourne season to be announced in January. Celebrating the best of Baroque, the season will present Australian debut performances from international guest artists, an exciting theatrical collaboration with CIRCA Contemporary Circus and Australian premiere arrangements. Alongside the live concert season, for the very first time, each mainstage concert in the 2021 season will be filmed and released as a broadcast quality production on the innovative new digital platform Brandenburg One, bringing the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra to audiences across Australia on demand.

Carriageworks, one of Australia’s largest contemporary multi-arts centres, will again be a major hub for Sydney Festival in 2021, presenting five world premieres including a new video installation by award-winning Australian artist Tina Havelock Stevens titled THANK YOU FOR HOLDING and launching 6 January. During the three-week festival running from 6 until26 January 2021, Carriageworks will present world premieres by ResidentCompanies Force Majeure, Sydney Chamber Opera as well as the seventh edition of Yellamundie Festival by Mooghalin Performing Arts.

Presented free to the public from 6 until 24 January, THANK YOU FOR HOLDING byHavelock Stevens, is a single-channel video work responding to the relentless tides of anxiety produced by the uncertain present. The work sees the artist perform a staunch drumming set from a raised platform which is drawn from pillar to post inside the ground floor of The Clothing Store building at Carriageworks by her co-performer, Ivey Wawn.

Curated by CarriageworksDirector of Programs Daniel Mudie Cunningham and created in August 2020, the improvised, ritualistic and urgent drumming score holds the space but cannot hold time. The two performers – masked but not blind, their vision 20/20– take pause in the holus-bolus of the suspended present.

For more detail and to purchase tickets please visit: carriageworks.com.au

Anna Schwartz Gallery will unveil a new first-floor gallery space, Gallery 02, on 18 November to be launched with an exhibition of new works by celebrated Australian artist Stephen Bram. The new gallery space underwent a transformative renovation overseen by the gallery’s original architect Denton Corker Marshall, that reflects the ground floor architecture and creates a cohesive space.

The exhibition of Stephen Bram works will be presented from 18 November until 19 December 2020 in Gallery 02, alongside the recently reopened John Nixon exhibition Groups + Pairs 2016 – 2020 in Gallery 01.  Groups + Pairs 2016 – 2020 represents the final exhibition the seminal artist produced in his lifetime. John Nixon passed away earlier this year.

Image: Stephen Bram, Untitled, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 210 x 390 cm, Photo: Photographer, © Stephen Bram. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery

Bell Shakespeare has announced their 2021 season, which will mark the company’s return to the stage and live performance for the first time since the COVID-19 lockdown in March. As Australia’s national touring theatre company and now in its 31st year, Bell Shakespeare will travel across the country with a program including an evening with company Founding Artistic Director John Bell, a remounting of this year’s popular Hamlet production that closed just 1.5 weeks after opening due to lockdown, and a staging of the popular classic A Midsummer Night’s Dream.