Will Cox

Two musical traditions, ancient and modern, are being brought to the masses at this year’s Rising, in large, participatory events. Between Consort of the Moon and 10,000 Kazoos, you’ll find a bewildering array of sounds but what do a hymn discovered on ancient clay tablets and a kazoo have in common? More than you might think.

Walking between Jeremy Shaw’s seven-channel video work feels like time travel. In a dark room, Robert Andrew’s translation machine converts language into images. And in AJ King and Fiona Hall’s immersive work, branches and penises emerge from fish cans. There’s a lot going on at the Hobart gallery.

Iconic conceptual artist Jenny Holzer’s text-based projections are coming to Melbourne – and a new generation of voices, contexts and languages are joining them. In partnership with Rising, we take a look at the electric collaboration.

What happens when queer artists take on Aussie Rules? In partnership with Rising, we look at a bold new performance artwork where art meets sport, and football meets fetishism.

This winter, an empty Fortitude Valley warehouse will be transformed into a 36-room, labyrinthine choose-your-own-adventure theatre show in the vein of New York’s acclaimed Sleep No More. No two experiences will be the same.

Ahead of her new show in Melbourne’s Flinders Street ballroom, we step into the strange and wonderful world of one of Australia’s foremost artists. There we find gender-fluid nudes, drawers overflowing with both human and animal hair, and an anthropomorphised cat with tyre-tread flesh.

The celebrated artist’s new show at Flinders Street Station Ballroom is like stepping into another world – somewhere in the cracks between the natural and the artificial, humans and animals, crisis and resilience.

The Kamilaroi/Gamilaroi artist’s newest video work, presented at Rising festival, sees him cruising the western suburbs in a pink Monaro, reframing his initiation into manhood.

Disrobe and climb into a jet-black bath. Look up at the sky and listen deeply. This is Flow State, a short-run “sonic bathing” experience coming to the city this winter for Rising festival.

From the team behind House of Mirrors, it's another labyrinthine installation taking spatial confusion into grittier territory. And it's back at the Garden of Unearthly Delights this year.

As the ragged, run-down icons of the west are knocked down and developed, David Hourigan recreates them as tiny, breathtakingly detailed models.

There’s a labyrinthine CBD institution, a handsome art bookstore that looks like a design boutique, and a 30-year-old queer bookshop. Trawl these shelves for new releases, classics and more obscure titles.