It’s a full week of arts up ahead as HELEN MUSA’s weekly “Artsweek” column illustrates.

“MATTERS of the Heart” is a show about love “with a cliche-free guarantee”, covers everything from body image and babies to relationship baggage as Deborah O’Toole sings Billy Joel, Burt Bacharach, Joni Mitchell and U2, with some music theatre tunes thrown in. Tuggeranong Arts Centre Theatre, August 5.

AS part of National Poetry Month, the ACT Live Poetry Showcase will be held in the Fairfax Theatre, National Gallery, on August 5. Featured poets include “CityNews” writer Barrina South and Andrew Moss, both commissioned to write poems in response to a work in the NGA collection.

ANU Centre for Classical Studies and the Friends of the ANU Classics Museum will celebrate the life and contributions of the late scholar Graeme Clarke (1934-2023), Haydon-Allen Lecture Theatre, The Tank (Building 23), August 5.

THE 18th Latin American Film Festival returns to the ANU Film Group with 15 films screening over two weeks in August and September. Part One opens at Kambri Cinema at ANU, August 9. All screenings are free and open to the public.

Stage

• DIRECT from Dublin, “The Rhythms Of Ireland”, choreographed by Irish dance champion Michael Donnelan makes a journey through the history of Ireland in music and dance. Canberra Theatre, August 7. ·
• “COIL”, by the re:group performance collective, will create a live cinema experience set in a ’90s video rental store using video DJing technology to create an entire cast from a solo performer, Steve Wilson-Alexander. The Q, Queanbeyan, August 8-9.
• AUSTRALIAN dance company “Burn the Floor,” collaborating with First Nations star Mitch Tambo, his vocalist wife Lea Firth and dancer, Albert David, will be at Canberra Theatre, August 9.
• FRANKIE’S Guys and their live band, transport audiences back to the golden era of live music, with more than 20 classics, including “Big Girls Don’t Cry” to “Walk Like A Man”. Canberra Theatre, August 9.

 Galleries

• “A Year’s Worth of Garbage” by Yasmin Idriss is a culmination of a year’s worth of industrial waste collected from just one framing shop, re-created into a series of sculptural artworks. Contemporary Art Space Manuka, until August 13. 
• ARTIST Ajith Perera is inspired by Surrealism, and his exhibition, “Shadow work”, is in Strathnairn’s Homestead Gallery, Holt, until August 27.

• “STEP INTO the Limelight” is the 17th annual art exhibition of work by Canberra High School students. At M16 Artspace, Griffith, until August 27.
• ANU School of Art & Design Gallery has a visual meditative sound experience featuring contemplative artworks featured in the “Jessica Loughlin: of light” exhibition, with live cello played by Hilary Kleini, August 4.
• STRATHNAIRN Arts peoples’ choice competition “Squares” is back for its 17th year. Open to all artists, amateur, professional, young and old, the exhibition is in the Woolshed, where visitors to the exhibition will vote to decide the winner. August 5-27.
• “REFLECTIONS of a Philosophical Voyager” showcases 18 bookbinders from around Australia – several from the ACT — highlighting the varied approaches to the text of Nicolas Baudin’s 1802 letter to Governor Philip King. At Village Gallery Sutton until August 20.
• THE NGA continues to highlight the contribution of Australian women artists with “Know My Name: Making it Modern”, celebrating the works of pioneering women artists such as Margaret Preston, Grace Cossington Smith and Clarice Beckett, with a focus on the period between the 1920s and the late 1940s. Opens August 5.
• NANCY Sever Gallery has exhibitions by painters Wilma Tabacco and Cameron Haas at Level 1, 131 City Walk, Civic, August 6-September 10.
• ANCA’s annual “PIN” show where sculptors, printmakers, painters, ceramicists, silversmiths, machine-makers, photographers, woodworkers and glass artists created wearable pins and brooches is back after a break of five years. At the Dickson gallery August 9-19.

Music

• JEONGHWAN Kim, winner of the Sydney International Piano Competition, will be at Wesley Music Centre, August 3.
• MT AINSLIE Music Club will perform in a new event at Ainslie Arts Centre, Braddon, August 3.
• CANBERRA Blues Society will celebrate International Blues Music Day with seven hours of  blues music from nine acts, Harmonie German Club, Narrabundah, August 5.
• THE Black Mountain Piano Quartet will be at All Saints, August 5.
• THE Miriam Liebermann Trio will be at The Street Theatre, August 5.
• THE Spooky Men’s Chorale, are coming to Llewellyn Hall, August 5.
• THE musical sequence B flat, A, C, B natural spells out “B.A.C.H.”, hidden by JS Bach in his scores. Luminescence Chamber Singers and violinist/vocalist Anna Freer, have chosen the letters for their next concert title. ANU Drill Hall Gallery, August 4 and August 6.