Sydney Festival receives record philanthropic donation
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Sydney Festival has received its largest ever philanthropic donation from a leading businessman who shot to public prominence when he purchased Kurt Cobain s MTV Unplugged guitar at auction for nearly $9 million.
Self-made millionaire Peter Freedman is the festival s knight in shining armour, having committed a minimum $5 million.
Freedman was first introduced to the Sydney Festival 10 years ago by then festival director and friend Lieven Bertels and he made his first philanthropic gift of $100,000 in 2015. His gifts to date have totalled $1.6 million.
Paddington eatery Lucio s to auction off famous wall art
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It started when Sidney Nolan sketched Ned Kelly s letterbox helmet on the back of a table docket while lunching at Lucio s Restaurant in Paddington.
Filming had just wrapped on the movie
Burke & Wills, and Nolan, employed to paint scenes, was in a celebratory mood. Chuffed by the gesture, Lucio Galletto, who had only the year before moved from Balmain to Paddington, hung the bill on his terrace wall in a gold frame.
Other artists have since left behind tableside sketches or gifted works. Long-time family friend John Olsen went so far as to design the menu cover.
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There is one thing that unites FOBs, Asians and white people , says writer Winnie Dunn, and that is pork rolls.
The ubiquitous Vietnamese snack happens to be a convergent and climactic plot point for a Quentin Tarantino-esque multi-channel art installation premiering at Sydney Festival that explores the lived experience of growing up in multi-cultural western Sydney.
Inspired by life in western Sydney, the creators of Sex, Drugs and Pork Rolls on the streets of Bankstown.
Credit:Steven Siewert
Counting and Cracking, swept the Helpmann awards.
It features the talents of Prime Minister Literary Award winner Omar Sakr and novelist Michael Mohammed Ahmad.
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It was only three years ago that Courtney Stewart brought to life Michelle Law s hit domestic comedy,
Single Asian Female, at the Belvoir Theatre.
But as the new Richard Wherrett Fellow, awarded by the Sydney Theatre Company to new or emerging directors, Stewart doesn t mind if her future is off the stage rather than on it. I love developing new work so much more than acting because you are involved in the conversation so much earlier, Stewart said. There is something amazing about working with a writer who is living, who is muscling together this thing that they want to say and you get to be a part of that. It s such a massive privilege because it s a really vulnerable position for them to be in to then invite someone else in, who they may or may not know, to contribute and make that piece stronger.