Australia Has No Culture? Yeah, F*ck Off, Mate
Here are 15 contemporary Australian artists and artworks I love (that also prove Australia's cultural scene is thriving)
Back in 2021, I was living in the United Kingdom and already pretty established in its art scene after only four years there. Most of my friends were artists because of this. And when I told them I was moving to Australia, so many of them responded with some version of, “Why would you do that? There’s no culture there.”
The phrasing wasn’t always that specific, but the implication was always the same: Australia was some kind of cultural blackhole and any serious artist finds a way to escape its gravitational pull on their creativity and ambition.
I didn’t understand this attitude, but I found it was shared by many of my artist-friends in the United States, too. If you knew an Aussie artist outside of Australia, the odds were that artist hadn’t stopped complaining about how terrible it is to be in artist inside the country and how they had to leave to be able to really start pursuing their dreams. Once I returned to Australia, for the first time as an established artist myself, I found Aussie artists still living here were no less generous about the local arts scene.
Here’s an example of how bleakly Aussies talk about the market here. While I was repped at one agency here, I contemplated jumping to another. After a handful of chats, that agent told me, “Listen, I’m not going to sign you. Your agent is terrible. I’m terrible. We’re all terrible. The best thing you can do for your career is just go back to the States.”
The thing is, I find this attitude both self-sabotaging and ludicrous given the cultural history of modern Australia — a relatively tiny country that has produced monumental works of arts, whole swaths of art movements that were consequential even if they’re not as internationally known as they should be, and, most importantly, a legion of artists that can compete on the world stage any day of the week. The Aussie propensity for shitting on this reality, part of the tall poppy syndrome that afflicts almost everyone here, cannot diminish this reality.
So, today I thought I would share with you some evidence of how utterly fucking brilliant Australian artists and art are by pointing you toward a slew of artists and artworks you should make yourself immediately familiar with. My hope in doing this is that the Australian government provides me with some sort of tourism subsidy to help fund this newsletter and podcast - heh. But seriously, I’m all for taking bribes. I have no integrity when it comes to free trips to Tasmania or the Whitsundays, Albo! (Albo is Anthony Albanese, the prime minister.)
Jokes aside, Australia is an incredibly multicultural country despite the fact that most of the culture that does reach the outside world ends up being very white. I want to share with you a different, more holistic view of the country. This isn’t a best of list or anything like that. It’s not a summary of Australian cultural history either (which is more than 65,000 years old), focusing instead on only the past 10 years or so or, rather, what’s excited me most that Aussies originated in the past decade. Many of my friends aren’t even on the list, so read nothing more into this other than my passion and my desire that you get a taste of what I love so much about Australia’s incredibly rich culture. I hope you find as much to enjoy here and be inspired by as I have.
“Please Like Me” (TV series: 2013 - 2016)
I don’t believe in declaring anything the “best of” and I even struggle to call something my “favorite”, but I can say that no Australian TV series has quite moved me like “Please Like Me” (2013) from creator Josh Thomas. I dare say, it’s a perfect series — four seasons and 32 episodes I couldn’t even begin to give any kind of note about because how do you improve something that’s already this good? Despite the fact that it concluded in 2016, I only discovered it in 2021 and had no idea it was already half a decade old by that point. It might even be that most impossible of thing for art this much of a specific period…timeless.
Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker wrote this about “Please Like Me” in 2018 if you want to learn more before you seek it out.
There’s also this clip I want to share with you, though maybe only watch it if you need further persuading as it comes later in the series and could diminish the emotional gut punch you might experience watching it as part of the actual narrative. If you do watch, in this scene, a character named Arnold struggles with coming out to his father. The father of his ex-boyfriend, the series’ central character played by Thomas, suggests he rehearse with him. Then…something magical happens.
Michael Mohammad Ahmad (author)
Michael Mohammad Ahmad was one of the first novelists I read upon my return to Australia in 2021. His second novel, The Lebs, shattered me and, I would argue, is essential reading for anyone living in the West and struggling to better understand the immigrant experience of all those Muslims the media — and so many politicians — love to vilify so much. If you need some framing with a novel you might already be familiar with, I would call it the Arab immigrant’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. The final few chapters are some of the most illuminating literature I’ve ever read.
Ahmed is also a teacher and founder of Sweatshop Literacy Movement, which promotes literacy and writing in Western Sydney’s incredibly diverse community.
Blak Douglas (artist)
If Australia has a revolutionary spirit — and it does — it’s now almost exclusively found in its non-white residents and, most predominantly, in its First Nations (Aboriginal) artists whose art, like their lives, exist in a state of open and constant rebellion against the settler culture they must live alongside of. Bearing this in mind, I will say that Blak Douglas — who is a proud Dhungatti man and also of European descent — is amongst the most bracing and impossible to ignore. I love his work so much, I even had him as a guest on the 5AM StoryTalk Podcast. He’s a self-practiced artist whose work melds graphic design elements and a fiery political attitude that hasn’t made him as many friends here in Oz amongst the influential elite.
Listen to my chat with Blak here:
“Native Tongue” from Mo’Ju featuring The Pasefika Vitoria Choir (song)
At the time European colonization began, there were over 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages spoken on the Australian continent and islands. Today, there are approximately 123 still spoken today and only 12 of them are taught to children as their first language. Of the total that remain, 109 are considered endangered.
Do you know why this the is the case? It’s not complicated. There’s even a word for it. Genocide.
Bear this in mind as you listen to “Native Tongue” from Mo’Ju, who is of mixed Wiradjuri and Filipino heritage. They are also queer and non-binary. It’s not a stretch to understand why so much of their music deals with identity.
Jennifer Kent (filmmaker)
Jennifer Kent has directed only two films and both of them are masterpieces — The Babadook (2014) and The Nightingale (2018). The Babadook is a terrifying — and heartbreaking — exploration of loss and grief that blends the real with fantasy in a way that feels so authentic to depression. Meanwhile, The Nightingale is probably one of the most devastating, nearly impossible watches of my life. An Irish woman whose baby and husband have been murdered by an English soldier sets out on a quest for revenge with an escaped Aboriginal man as her unexpected ally. Call it a horror story of colonization. Brace yourselves for it, but it’s worth it — especially if you’re confused why so many intergenerational victims of colonization are still paying the price for it today.
I have no idea why Kent hasn’t made more films, but I hope there are several more in her.
Kate Beynon (artist)
Kate Beynon is a multidisciplinary artist of Chinese–Malaysian and Welsh descent. She migrated to Australia at four-years-old. Her work blends Eastern and Western influences, from language to comic book traditions to graffiti. This tension is an expression of her own hybrid identity. Like so many of us, she’s a creature of multiple worlds and explores that in her work. I first encountered her via her 2010 piece Self-portrait with guardian spirits, which now hangs at the Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney.
“Colin from Accounts” (TV series, 2022 - Present)
Before anyone was talking about “Colin from Accounts”, I stumbled across it on the Australian streamer that originated it. I had no idea what it was about, but I was in a desperate need for a laugh and it starred and was co-created by Patrick Brammall — an actor who has elevated everything he’s touched for more than a decade. While I think he has dramatic chops, his comic timing is so good that I suspect many directors have had to make a habit of telling him to stop stealing the spotlight from other actors in his scenes. With “Colin” — which I’ve often described as an American R-rated sex comedy written by Richard Curtis (a reference only cinephiles will get, sorry) — Brammall finally gets to showcase every facet of his storytelling gifts. His partner in this endeavor is his co-star and co-creator, Harriet Dyer, who is also his real-life wife. The two write every episode, which has quickly evolved into a awkward, tense, always hilarious rom-com for the ages.
Australia needs to stop being so serious about cinema and start making more big-screen films like “Colin from Accounts”!
Melissa Lucashenko (author)
Melissa Lucashenko is a Goorie author of Bundjalung and European heritage. Her novels are brutal and beautiful stories of Aboriginal struggle to endure colonization and reconcile with the historical and generational violence done to First Nations peoples. I’d begin by reading her stunning 2016 novel, Too Much Lip, which won the Miles Franklin Award — Australia’s biggest literary award.
Justin Kurzel (filmmaker)
Justin Kurzel, like Jennifer Kent, is a director I don’t personally know, but I would kill — no pun intended, given the content of his work — to spend a long night chatting art with. With the exception of his one “commercial film” — 2016’s Assassin’s Creed — his work is marked by startling visuals and style, a deep thematic interest in the human capacity for violence, and a need to understand how minds are radicalized toward that violence. I think Snowtown (2011) and Macbeth (2015) are excellent and even logical places to start, but I want to sing the praises of True History of the Kelly Gang. It’s a film I initially (and wrongly) decided I didn’t care for, due to the fact that I’m such an admirer of the 2001 Peter Carey novel of the same name it’s adapted from. Kurzel’s film does not remotely feel like the experience I had reading it. At all. And yet…and yet I also had a visceral reaction to the experience, which is more than I can say about a lot of art I encounter. Especially in cinema, where I find myself not as easily moved in my forties as I was when I was younger.
Adaptations must justify themselves beyond being faithful cinematic dramatizations of what’s on the page, meaning they must add something to the conversation the book is having. In this regard, True History offers an alternative view of Carey’s novel, forcing the period work through a violently modern lens. The past becomes painfully present — subtext increasingly becomes text or, rather, graffiti spray-painted in neon across your screen — climaxing with a debate about what embracing Kelly as a national hero, a symbol of Australian character, says about the country’s history and current identity. It’s bold, violent, and brilliant.
“Fisk” (TV series, 2021 - 2025)
A lot of Australian series have tried to lay claim to the title “Australia’s ‘The Office’”, a claim complicated by the fact that this past year an Australian version of “The Office” was actually released. But none but a few have come close to earning it. “Fisk”, from creators Kitty Flanagan and Vincent Sheehan, is one of the ones that have. In some ways, it’s actually preferable to the original UK series in 2026 as there’s a lot more heart on display. The titular lawyer played by Flanagan is autistic, even she’s not called as such, making her the neurodivergent hero for the 2020s.
Michelle de Kretser (author)
Sri Lanka-born Aussie novelist Michelle de Kretser is a two-time winner of the Miles Franklin Award. Her sixth novel won it for her the first time. The second time was in recognition of her next novel, Scary Monsters, which is…hauntingly beautiful. It’s a novel in two parts, connected only thematically. The distinction between these parts is so conceptual that the book is published with two covers so you can flip it and start from either side. This is someone who writes so profoundly about displacement, immigration, and identity that it was her work that first helped me begin to process my own immigrant experience after leaving the United States in 2017.
Warwick Thornton (filmmaker)
Warwick Thornton is one of the most exciting Aboriginal directors in Australia today — but also one of the most exciting, full stop. He’s a Kaytetye man whose films center First Nations stories and are what I would describe as visual poems. I’d suggest you start with his beautiful debut, Samson and Delilah (2009), or the horrific Sweet Country (2017) — which stars a trio of my favorite Australian actors, Sam Neill and Bryan Brown. If you enjoy Sweet Country, a sequel of sorts called Wolfram will be released later this year.
Khaled Sabsabi (artist)
You might be starting to notice a quiet theme behind a lot of my selections for this piece, which is displacement and identity. This has everything to do with the fact that I self-exiled myself from the United States in 2016 and now intend to live and die in a country my mother was born in, but I didn’t grow up in. I’m an immigrant despite my ancestry, my wife is an immigrant, my children are immigrants. My mother and great-grandparents were immigrants. Other members of my family are/were born outside of America. Consequently, I have never had a clear sense of my geographical self, which is no doubt why I react so powerfully to someone like Lebanese-born Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi, whose work explores the complexities of our identity when it comes to place and displacement and, of course, the immigrant experience.
Sabsabi recently found himself at the center of a political shitstorm in the arts community here after his invitation by Creative Australia to represent Australia at Venice Biennale 2026. There’s a very pro-Israel faction here in Oz and it didn’t care for some earlier art of his. Sabsabi’s censorship echoes other similar events here in the past two years, including the Adelaide Writers’ Week fiasco that recently resulted in this year’s festival being canceled. The instinct to censor voices critical of Israel’s war crimes is powerful here, but, over and over, artists stand in unity against it. This is not a culture that tolerates being told to shut up.
Sophie Hyde (filmmaker)
Sophie Hyde is a director I’m determined to make sure everyone knows more about. Her work is visually poetic, always stunningly acted, structurally creative, and…I’m not sure how best to describe it. I suppose I could say that her films make me feel like I’m watching novels. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022), which stars Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack, is probably her most internationally appreciated film, but I swear by her debut 52 Tuesdays (2013) and Animals (2019). Her latest, Jimpa, will be out within a couple of weeks of this article’s publication — starring Olivia Colman, John Lithgow, and her child Aud Mason-Hyde.
Sophie joined the 5AM StoryTalk Podcast in its first season for an incredibly insightful conversation about her life and work. Listen to that here:
Vincent Namatjira (artist)
Back in 2024, I got to visit the National Gallery of Australia to check out the first major survey of First Nations artist Vincent Namatjira’s work titled Australia in colour. It was…amazing. Namatjira, a Western Arenta man, would typically be described as a portraitist — in fact, he’s won Australia’s biggest art prize, the Archibald, just like Blak Douglas — but his portraiture technique is the definition of “subversive”, I think. He uses color, wit, and caricature to directly confront and deconstruct the colonial mythology that underlies so much of Australia’s modern history (I say modern, because the Aboriginal culture is the world’s oldest, at least 65,000 years old as I’ve already pointed out). The powerful and wealthy, who still largely control Australia’s destiny, are his favorite target.
Controversy goes with the job, too. For example, the collage of portraits below, Australia in Colour (2021), features a depiction of the richest person in Australia — Gina Rinehart — whose sole purpose in life seems to be to enrich herself regardless of whom she has to align herself with to do that (cough - white supremacists - cough). Well, Gina didn’t like how buffoonish it made her look and demanded that the NGA remove it. The result? Crowds rushed to check out Namatjira’s depiction of her.
Cole Haddon (screenwriter, novelist, and podcaster)
Don’t forget this American-born Aussie. He’s easily in the top six…okay, seven-hundred most interesting and exciting artists working in the country today. Some even say his arts & culture podcast is drawing international attention to Australia and so Tourism Australia and Creative Australia should both throw heaps of cash at him to keep doing what he would anyway. If not cash, some free trips — or a coffee and beer budget — would be be acceptable.
Love this post. I've added some of these movies to my to-watch list. A slight rebuttal, Sam Neill is a New Zealander! (or Aotearoan, but I haven't managed to get anyone to start calling kiwis that)
I wish we got another season of Firebite.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14814570/