Welcome to Arts House Season 1, 2014

At Arts House artists take creative risks, putting audiences on the frontline of powerful stories, urgent issues, fascinating international collaborations, new contexts and new ways of making art!

The year begins with a collaboration with Melbourne Indigenous Arts Festival: Little Black Bastard is a compelling story of hardship and achievement told by Aboriginal Elder Noel Tovey, charting his early history in North Melbourne and his journey to fame and fortune. Now 82 years old, Tovey brings his incredible life story up to date.

And then, because we know you love big surprises… The Festival of Live Art (FOLA) – a collaboration with Footscray Community Arts Centre and Theatre Works – kicks off an extended long weekend at Arts House on 19 March with Tristan Meecham’s Game Show. With a cast of 150, it’s our biggest ever participation event! Start training now to be match fit for FOLA at Arts House – four days of brilliantly weird, strangely seductive, sometimes confronting live art performances/talks/suppers/ sleepovers/dance-offs, culminating in a performance marathon on Sunday 23 March.

In April the sublime Astra, Punkasila and Slave Pianos present one of the year’s most adventurous music and visual experiences – The Lepidopters: A Space Opera. Moving into May, as part of Next Wave, we’re excited to co-present rising stars Natalie Abbott, I’m Trying To Kiss You and Shian Law. Season 1 wraps in July with cross-arts performance experience LIVE WITH IT we all have HIV, created by BalletLab Artistic Director Phillip Adams and visual artist Andrew Hazewinkel in collaboration with HIV+ communities. LIVE WITH IT we all have HIV coincides with the 20th International AIDS Conference.

Bubbling along all the while are our CultureLABs… This season choreographers Antony Hamilton, Kristina Chan and Rosalind Crisp, and performance makers Tamara Saulwick, Rawcus and Ashley Dyer will test and experiment using all their considerable skills, with a view to making work that will alter your mind!

And because we love doing what we do and want a planet to keep doing it on, we’re doing it green – with Greenie-in-Residence Matt Wicking (thank you Australia Council and City of Melbourne!). Matt is inviting in some truly insightful people to talk about possible futures and how to get there; and will be helping several arts companies to develop their environmental sustainability plans.

What’s not to love? Come and be entranced – we can’t do it without you.