Because once you become aware of birds, it is hard to ignore the threats facing them. The black-throated finch is a bird Dionysius has never seen, and it’s possible he’ll never get the chance. Endangered and elusive, the finches used to live all along north-eastern Australia, but are now extinct in New South Wales and sighted infrequently in parts of north and central Queensland.

In mid-May, I received a Facebook invite to ‘Vessels to a Story’, an exhibition put on by RISE Refugees, the only organisation in Australia founded and run by refugees, asylum seekers and ex-detainees. ‘This exhibition is not a celebration of “multiculturalism”,’ the opening sentence read, ‘nor is it a celebration of Melbourne as a “melting pot” of cultures.’

Come 2030 – or 2040, or 2050 – when the region’s geopolitical environment will look very different than it does today, what will the submarines actually be used for? Who will be in our sights? The Chinese? Terrorists? Nobody asks; nobody says; in truth, nobody knows. This is the basis on which billions of dollars of federal money is shovelled into the raging furnace of the military-industrial machine. Conversely, our painters, writers, editors, and directors must endlessly, and minutely, articulate everything they do in the increasingly forlorn hope of securing even a small amount of funding from an ever diminishing pool.

Regional street art initiatives in Australia are few and far between. A few notable examples include the Back Alley Gallery in Lismore, the May Lane Street Art Project in Bathurst and the Brim Silos in Victoria. Despite their rarity, street art commissions in regional cities have huge economic and cultural potential.

The game is ultimately one of endurance: the video-works total six hours screened back to back, and experiencing them is akin to stumbling upon a raucous sorority party, and fighting the urge to simply shut the door. While many of my fellow gallery-goers bowed out of the competition after mere minutes, I persevered, irradiating elitist triumph. Yet the truth was that I too felt alienated by the hyper-verbal characters on the screen before me; that their private speech codes and aspirational posturing made me feel old.

This is the Capitoline Venus, the Roman copy of a second-century BC Greek original which ordinarily graces the hall of the Capitoline Museums in Rome. She’s in the so-called ‘modest’ position as per the canon of the Venus pudica, the left hand covering the groin, the right hand doing a rather poor job of concealing the breasts. However, even this proverbial modesty was deemed insufficient last month, when it was decided to place the Venus in a box – or rather, to build a box around her – to protect the sensibility of visiting dignitaries.

Women writers have it pretty good...