Sydney

This year the parade will not be free to attend, the first time in its 40 year history. Sydney’s annual Mardi Gras celebration will look very different to previous years, but even in a global pandemic the city’s most colourful show must go on. Here’s everything you need to know about the event on March 6, 2021: Will there be a parade this year? Due to concerns around crowd control and COVID-19 restrictions there will be no parade down Oxford Street to celebrate this year’s Mardi Gras festival. Instead, more than 30,000 people will gather at the Sydney Cricket Ground for an official ticketed event with police issuing a warning to those planning to celebrate in the city. The SCG

The Impressionists’ works have been displayed and enjoyed around the world for almost two-hundred years – but never like this. A new exhibition is opening in Sydney that pays homage to the paintings of artist Claude Monet through light, color and sound. It also uses immersive technology to trace the history of the Impressionist movement of the mid-19th century through to the early 20th century. Monet & Friends – Life, Light & Colour premieres at Sydney’s Royal Hall of Industries in March. The paintings are projected on an enormous scale, illuminating the bold brushstrokes of Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas and more. It takes visitors back to a time when the face of European art

Sit back with a Van Gogh cocktail and let the fun begin Forget traditions of tiptoeing through unnervingly silent galleries and viewing paintings from afar – the introduction to Van Gogh Alive. This exhibition at the Royal Hall of Industries at the Entertainment Quarter in Sydney’s Moore Park takes these uncertainties out of the picture by taking the audience through a “large-scale, multisensory experience” in 45 minutes. Splashed across the equivalent of 30 IMAX screens up to seven metres high and accompanied by a soundtrack of popular classical music, ranging from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons to the Harry Potter soundtrack, Van Gogh Alive tells the story of the Dutch master’s life using images of 2000 sketches, drawings and paintings. Each chapter