Metro Arts unveils its 2024 season of explosive performances, bold exhibitions and experimental dance
Trailblazing creative institution Metro Arts has unveiled its groundbreaking 2024 season of events, exhibitions and performances, which is set to shine a spectacularly bright light on a new wave of innovative artists and their daring endeavours. With experimentation at its core, the stellar new program will thrill audiences and enthusiasts with 13 thought-provoking art exhibitions, ten boundary-pushing mainstage productions, and the debut of a two-week dance festival. Here’s a sneak peek of what’s to come …
Metro Arts’ captivating 2024 performance program has been carefully curated to highlight a crop of emerging and mid-career artists who are pushing boundaries and genres. As part of the program’s revived One Night Stand series, audiences can immerse in a cheeky and evocative live life-drawing experience with HOTMESS – In the Flesh, bust out femme anthems at FEMIOKE, and witness heartfelt stand-up comedy at its finest when online sensation Anisa Nandaula stages her live show Let’s Go. From June 19–29, Brisbane-based arts collective Counterpilot will mark its return to Metro Arts with Scaredy House, an interactive ghost-story-style theatre event for families – think Goosebumps meets Minecraft, with an existential twist.
Metro Arts will also present Queensland’s newest dance festival, DANCE24, from May 22 to June 1, which will feature a suite of premieres as well as workshops and discussions that will take the magic of dance beyond the stage. The DANCE24 program, which will officially launch on February 29, is set to feature unmissable productions like Matriarchs by Olivia Adams – an exploration of identity through the stories of women who have come before – as well as Amy Zhang’s Japanese-game-show-inspired dance-theatre production, Game Boy.
The stellar 2024 season will also showcase the rich tapestry of contemporary art through monthly exhibitions and artist talks. Presented across the year in the Metro Arts Gallery, the exhibition program explores a range of themes including the impact of floods and the Metacrisis, which will be depicted through moving images by Gary Lobwein in In The Mudline (March 16 to April 20), while artist Jeremy Plint will delve into the ‘queering’ of family narratives through a display of hand-crafted soft-toy sculptures in Monolith from May 4 to June 1.
From June 8–29, Metro Arts will partner with The International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) to bring together scholars, artists and scientists from around the world for an explorative exhibition of groundbreaking electronic art. Come September, the Metro Arts Gallery, in conjunction with Brisbane Festival, will be transformed by Australian artist Elizabeth Willing into Kitchen Studio – an ambitious and immersive installation that challenges perceptions of the modern diet and how food is created.
That’s just a taste of what’s to come! To view the full 2024 program and to book tickets, head to the Metro Arts website.
This article was written in partnership with our friends at Metro Arts.
To find out more about what’s on in Brisbane, head to our Event Guide.
