Lots of arts to enjoy this week in Canberra. HELEN MUSA’s latest Artsweek column will get you started. 

It’s Eurovision Weekend all weekend at the National Film and Sound Archive. A highlight will see a live recording of Aussievision where hosts Mike Jones and Dale Roberts and special guests size up this year’s competition. They’ll be followed singer-songwriter Alfie Arcuri and Canberra indie rock outfit Archie, performing live. Then on May 12, the Eurovision 2024 Grand Final will be streamed on the big screen.

Geoff’s Poetry At Smiths on May 13 has Kathy Kituai from Canberra and Todd Turner from Sydney.

ArtsNational Molonglo Plains has an illustrated lecture by UK photographer and historian Roger Mendham covering some of the most beautiful cars ever built, from the earliest horseless carriages to the supercars of the 21st century in the Art of the Automobile. C3 Auditorium, 253 Crawford Street Queanbeyan, May 9.

The ANU Film Group is screening Stop Making Sense, the 1984 American concert film featuring a live performance by the American rock band Talking Heads and hailed as the greatest concert movie ever made. Kambri Cinema, May 11.

Dr Nandini Pandey will give a free public lecture on Diversity Arenas? A Roman Pre-History of Racial Capitalism. Research School of Social Sciences Auditorium 1.28, 146 Ellery Crescent, Acton, May 15.

Concerts

• The German-based Korean chamber ensemble Esmé Quartet will be here for the first time with Musica Viva to perform Webern, Mendelssohn, Debussy and 28-year-old Australian composer Jack Frerer’s Spiral Sequences. Llewellyn Hall, May 10.
• The Hourglass Ensemble from Sydney perform works by Kats-Chernin, Bartok, Liszt, and Greenaway, Wesley Music Centre, May 11.
• Canberra Bach Ensemble director Andrew Koll and the ensemble are preparing to travel to Bachfest 2024 in Leipzig, Germany, June 7-16. But first, they’ll perform Bach’s Chorale Cantata Cycle 1724-1725 at St Christopher’s Cathedral, Manuka, May 11-12.
• CSO Chamber Ensemble will perform Haydn and Grieg in Reverie, 2pm, Albert Hall, May 12.
• The next Merry Muse has The Lonely Fates plus Blackboard, Canberra Irish Club, Weston, May 12.
• National Opera plans to mark Mother’s Day with an afternoon of music and memories called Things My Mother Made, All Saints Church, Ainslie, May 12.
• Upcoming Indonesian artist, President Tidore, mixes traditional music from North Maluku with contemporary hip-hop. ANU Kambri, May 14. Tickets free.
• Virtuoso pianist Joyce Yang will perform Russian music, Snow Concert Hall, May 14.
• Austral Harmony, Jane Downer and Ariana Odermatt, will perform dance movements from JS Bach’s Partitas for solo keyboard and arranged for solo recorder, and Bellinzani’s Variations on La Folia, Wesley Music Centre’s Wednesday Lunchtime series, May 15.

Stage

• Fourteen is the true story of growing up gay in central Queensland, transformed into a theatre production by Shake & Stir Theatre Co. The Playhouse, May 9-11.
• Perform Australia Academy Program presents Stupid Is Just 4 2Day. Written by Lindsay Price, and directed by James Scott, the work is performed by year 8-10 students. The Mill Theatre, Building 3.3, Dairy Road, Fyshwick, May 9-11. 
• Jens Altheimer masterfully blends humour, imagination and heart in Whalebone, where a solitary worker races against time to our stories from a rogue AI. Bursting with dazzling visuals, it’s considered perfect for kids and adults. The Q, Queanbeyan, May 11.
• A Slightly Isolated Dog are back at The Q with The Trojan War, a romp through Homer. The Q, Queanbeyan, May 14-15.
• Patrick Hamilton’s Gaslight, is the play that launched the term “gaslighting”. Now adapted by Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson, it’s at The Playhouse, May 15-19.

Galleries

• Opening at M16 Artspace, Griffith, on May 9 are: Creating Apart, Together, 21 local visual, fibre, and textile artists from Networks Australia; Field of Vision by Lee Leibrandt; Monuments by Emma Pattenden;  and in Chutespace, Madeline Cardone’s Fold. Until June 9.
• Jonathan Kimberley’s exhibition, A Proposition towards A Praxis of Treaty with International Country | Portals out of The Garden of Non, is an artistic journey through Neolithic petroglyphs. ANU School of Art & Design Gallery, Acton, until May 23.
• ANCA Gallery’s exhibition Surface Tension by artists, Sally Clarke and Brenda Factor, opens on May 15.
• Sidney Nolan’s nine-panel, 11-metre-long work, Riverbend, is usually on permanent display in the Drill Hall Gallery, but now has a temporary home in the Nolan Gallery at Canberra Museum and Gallery until July 28.