21 hottest creative artists of 2021
The work of these dedicated individuals will influence what we see, read and listen to next year.
FILM AND TV
1. Eliza Scanlen (actor)
The Sydney actor already has shown her range in period drama Little Women and in this year’s Babyteeth, about the unlikely romance between a teenager with cancer and a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Scanlen is about to return to the thriller genre after her role as Amma in HBO series Sharp Objects. She will appear in M. Night Shyamalan’s new thriller, Old, opposite Rufus Sewell and Gael Garcia Bernal, due for release mid-2021.
2. Thomas M. Wright (actor and director)
Wright came up through Melbourne’s vibrant indie theatre scene where he was a member of the Black Lung theatre group. His acting work includes Top of the Lake and feature films The Man with the Iron Heart and Sweet Country. His directing debut was with Acute Misfortune, the feature film based on Erik Jensen’s biography of ill-fated artist Adam Cullen. Wright’s next project is a thriller about an undercover cop, The Unknown Man, featuring Joel Edgerton and Sean Harris, produced by See-Saw Films.
3. Sia (musician and director)
Get ready for Sia’s big-screen debut. For several years, the singer-songwriter behind Rhianna’s Diamonds has co-directed her music videos, often featuring dancer Maddie Ziegler. Now she has stepped up to direct a feature film, including her own music and with a central performance from Ziegler as a young girl with autism. Music is the name of the girl, and of the film. It’s due for release next month, and a soundtrack and related album are on the way.
CLASSICAL MUSIC
4. Anna-Louise Cole (soprano)
Cole was a singer in the Opera Australia chorus but found it hard to contain her voice within the ensemble. Breaking out, she won a place in the Opera Australia young artist program and before the lockdown was due to sing Sieglinde in the Brisbane Ring Cycle last November. While that has been postponed until November this year, Cole will be singing Sieglinde and also understudy for one of the biggest roles in the repertoire, the Ring’s Brunnhilde.
5. Grace Clifford (violinist)
One of the benefits of the pandemic on the nation’s classical music scene is that it has given an opportunity to hear Aussie soloists with Aussie orchestras. The absence of international guests has put the spotlight on local artists such as Clifford. She studied at
the famed Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and, in her early 20s, has embarked on a career as a soloist and partner in chamber music. 2021 sees her tour the mainland symphony orchestras, with performances of concertos by Bruch, Dvorak and Sibelius.
6. Connor D’Netto (composer)
Already known to followers of the new music scene, D’Netto also has had several performances by larger ensembles. He creates intricate instrumental textures and energetic solos. He has been commissioned as part of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s Fifty Fanfares project, in which 50 composers will write short orchestral works. D’Netto’s fanfare will be heard in the SSO’s season opener with Simone Young in February.
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
7. The Buckleys (country band)
Signed by Chris Murphy’s Petrol Records (making them labelmates with INXS), The Buckleys are three siblings from northern NSW. Sarah, the eldest, already has amassed a substantial catalogue of songs, having honed her craft in Nashville. With brother Lachlan and sister Molly, she returned to Nashville to record The Buckleys’ debut album, Daydream, which was released in September. A little bit country, a little bit hippie, The Buckleys are touring in early 2021 as part of the Country Roadshow.
8. Tones and I (singer-songwriter)
It’s been a wild and fast ride for Toni Watson, aka Tones and I, who parlayed her experiences as a busker in Byron Bay into the global hit single Dance Monkey. The catchy song is the most persistent ever to top the Australian charts, spending a record 16 weeks at No 1 in 2019, while the track was still the world’s second most-streamed song on Spotify in 2020. Tones and I’s next trick is her debut, yet-to-be-titled album, due for release in 2021.
9. Miiesha (singer-songwriter)
It was the breakthrough year for Miiesha Young in 2020, as her debut EP Nyaaringu picked up the ARIA award for best R & B/soul release and she was named new talent of the year at the National Indigenous Music Awards. Miiesha, who hails from the Aboriginal community of Woorabinda in central Queensland, sings about her experiences as a young Indigenous woman and the teaching of her family to understand her cultural inheritance.
DANCE
10. David Hallberg (artistic director)
Speed. Precision. Wow factor. These were the hallmarks of Hallberg’s career as an international ballet superstar, and he looks set to bring the same excitement to the Australian Ballet. A principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre and the Bolshoi in Moscow, Hallberg came to Melbourne to seek the care of the Australian Ballet’s renowned therapists after a career-threatening injury. They put him back on his feet, and now he’s back as artistic director of the company. His first season opens with an outdoor spectacular, Summertime at the Ballet, at the Margaret Court Arena.
11. Melanie Lane (choreographer)
Lane made a noise with her 2017 work WOOF, set to a techno soundtrack and using movement partly derived from clubland. This ensemble piece was picked up by Sydney Dance Company’s Rafael Bonachela and included in his New Breed program last year. Lane works with contemporary dance groups internationally and has been commissioned to make a new work for West Australian Ballet in its state season in June.
12. Tyrel Dulvarie (dancer)
Cairns-born dancer Dulvarie worked a variety of jobs and was thinking about joining the navy when he got a call from the Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts in Brisbane and began his dance training. He’s danced alongside Hugh Jackman and joined Bangarra Dance Theatre in 2016. Electrifying in solo and ensemble work, he’s noted for his performances in Jiri Kylian’s Stamping Ground and Frances Rings’s Unaipon.
VISUAL ARTS
13. Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran (artist)
Comic grotesques, garden gnomes or totems of a strange religion? Sydney artist Nithiyendran creates clay figures of comic or monstrous form, piecing bodies and limbs together, and then glazing or spray-painting them with bright, colours. Nithiyendran was born in Sri Lanka and his figures draw on a melting pot of mythologies and religions. Featured in group exhibitions, including 2020’s Archibald Prize in which he had a self-portrait, Nithiyendran has been granted a high-profile position at the Art Gallery of NSW, where his installation of 60 figure sculptures towers high in the entry vestibule.
14. Pierre Mukeba (artist)
A refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, now living in Adelaide, Mukeba produces large-format figure paintings that resonate with the humour, beauty and violence of his homeland. He started by painting on old sheets, and his gallery works retain that homespun quality, being painted on calico and with a collage of brightly patterned fabrics. Since his first exhibition in 2017, he has been shown in the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art and has been selected for this month’s NGV Triennial in Melbourne.
15. Angela Tiatia (artist)
The fashion industry, religion, female agency, art history, neocolonialism, immigration — all are channelled into the work of Tiatia, which both celebrates and critiques contemporary society’s obsession with images. Tiatia’s work has been exhibited in Singapore, Venice and London, and she has made a large-scale video work, to be shown in the NGV Triennial, that is inspired by the legend of Narcissus and by the deep shadows of Caravaggio’s paintings. Not one but 40 Narcissus figures crowd into the frame, a reflection of selfie culture and the individual’s clamour for attention.
THEATRE
16. Jason Arrow (actor)
If you haven’t heard of Arrow, you soon will. He’s won the lead role in Hamilton, one of the most anticipated shows to come to Australia in years. As Alexander Hamilton, he leads the story about the founding fathers of the US, retold by non-white actors. The show’s creator and originator of the title role, Lin-Manuel Miranda, was involved in selecting the Australian cast. Arrow, who has Zulu heritage, trained at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth.
17. Joe Klocek (actor)
It’s shaping up to be the young actor’s year. This month, Klocek appears on screen as the young Aaron Falk, Eric Bana’s character in outback murder mystery The Dry. Then comes his role in the stage adaptation of Trent Dalton’s mega-seller Boy Swallows Universe. It seems appropriate that Brisbane-born Klocek takes on the role of Eli Bell, the plucky kid from the rough Brisbane suburbs who engineers a prison break-in to visit his mother on Christmas Day. Postponed because of the pandemic, the premiere of Boy Swallows Universe will be at Queensland Theatre in August, directed by Sam Strong.
18. Kendall Feaver (playwright)
In 2015 a play that Sydney-born playwright Feaver had unsuccessfully shopped around, The Almighty Sometimes, won an award at the largest playwriting competition in Europe, the Bruntwood Prize. From that the play was produced by Sydney’s Griffin Theatre and the Royal Exchange in Manchester. Her latest work is an adaptation of Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career, now on stage at Belvoir St Theatre. She has another play at Griffin in 2021, Wherever She Wanders.
19. Catherine Van-Davies (a), Con Costi (b) and Alexander Berlage (c) (artistic directors)
The tiny Old Fitz theatre in Sydney’s Woolloomooloo has always punched above its weight and the theatre’s resident production company Red Line is embarking on bigger plans. To start, it has appointed an artistic “directorate” of actress Catherine Van-Davies, director Con Costi and designer Alexander Berlage to bring exciting new independent theatremakers to the venue.
LITERATURE
20. Kirli Saunders (poet)
One of the more inspiring cultural trends of recent years has been the resurgence of interest in Indigenous languages. Poet and author Saunders is the founder of Poetry in First Languages for Red Room Poetry, which hosts workshops in Indigenous languages for schoolchildren and poets. Named 2020 NSW Aboriginal woman of the year, Saunders’s debut poetry collection Kindred has been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. She is also the author of Bindi, an illustrated book for children.
21. Loraine Peck (author)
Peck worked at a variety of jobs, from magicians’ assistant to blackjack dealer, before switching to writing novels. She worked on her first book as part of literary agent Curtis Brown’s novel-writing course and then secured representation with the company. She has signed a two-book deal with Text and her first novel, The Second Son — a crime thriller about a gangland war in Sydney — will be released in February.
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