Here’s the latest Arts in the City column from HELEN MUSA.

Twenty-four-year-old Turkish pianist Korkmaz Can Sağlam dazzled audiences at the Sydney International Piano Competition last year so much that he won the Rex Hobcroft People’s Choice Award. He’ll be at Wesley Music Centre, in Forrest, on January 30 performing music by Bach, Shostakovich, Chopin and Liszt.

ACT artist Raquel Ormella has been awarded the Creative Australia (formerly Australia Council) Visual Arts and Crafts Strategy Major Commissioning Projects grant totalling $100,000, to help develop an exhibition called Am I in Your Way?, to run at Canberra Contemporary Art Space in 2025. The exhibition and associated digital publishing project with Marni Williams and Power Publishing will explore feminist protest and resistance, with a focus on Canberra.

Director of Ausdance ACT Cathy Adamek has joined her state and national Ausdance counterparts in mounting a strong response to a review of the government’s National Cultural Policy, Revive, which they say primarily emphasises visual arts and music and makes little reference to dance. 

Happy news from ANU flautist Sally Walker that on Christmas Day, her album with harpist Emily Granger, Something Like This, was announced as ABC Classic’s “featured album of the week”.

In 2023, Nicholas Burridge undertook a residency at Canberra Glassworks to study geology, time, and industrialisation by developing and exploring naturally formed glass, where heat and pressure was applied to basalt to form obsidian. The results can be seen in Built Geologies, curated by Aimee Frodsham. At 11 Wentworth Avenue, Kingston, until February 25, with a floor talk by the artist on February 24.

Tuggeranong Arts Centre’s Small Blessings exhibition by Lynne Petersen opened in October and the artist has been working with visitors creating birds, fish, wet-felted flowers, quirky finger puppets, tea-bag cosies and small hearts. On January 25 and 27, the items made will be given away to the public, but in return Petersen asks people to contribute a story about a “small blessing” to add to the project’s online collection. There are still drop-in making sessions on January 23 and 24.