Starkie has died of leukaemia surrounded by friends and family and ‘listening to Chuck Berry’, his daughter says

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The renowned Australian guitarist Bob “Bongo” Starkie has died at the age of 73, his band Skyhooks has announced.

Starkie died peacefully early on Saturday after a battle with leukaemia, the band’s archivist, Peter Green, said in a post on the Skyhooks Facebook page.

Samuel Lewis had to push his limits for the pop star’s global tour, set to hit his home town Melbourne next week

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It starts in a flood of red: a red-curtained stage, red flashing lights. It’s Lady Gaga, so theatrics are par for the course. As the lights go up it becomes clear she’s not standing on a giant stage but, in fact, wearing it.

A militaristic bodice extends into the swooping velvet drapes of a 7.5-metre-high gown. “It’s not just a dress; it’s a moving piece of art, an engineering feat,” says the Australian-Taiwanese designer Samuel Lewis, who dreamed up its design, and created it in collaboration with the LA-based costume designer Athena Lawton.

The actor and crime novelist on telling stories, not slowing down and the lessons his mother taught him

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Bryan Brown gives a barely perceptible nod of welcome after I arrive by ferry at Balmain wharf, as he steps out from under the semicircular roof of the late 19th-century timber shelter here, the last of its kind on Sydney harbour.

“How’s it going?” he asks, his Australian drawl at once familiar from his roles in 80-plus films and television series.

The late Australian artist ‘wanted to challenge orthodoxy in everything he did’, says Sue Cramer, his wife and co-curator of a new survey of his playful, rigorous career

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John Nixon, the late Australian avant-garde artist, would sometimes save the shells from his boiled eggs and sprinkle them across blank paint, creating his own starry night. Other times he’d set himself rules, such as painting only in orange for five years. It was 1996 and he was becoming a father, so he wanted a streamlined practice – plus, what other artist was associated with orange?

These anecdotes – just two among many – reflect not only Nixon’s lifelong frugality, idiosyncrasies and strategies, but his steadfast blending of art into everyday life for more than 50 years. His hardline minimalism never feels stifling or overwrought, but rigorous and playful, critical yet fortuitous.

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