Arts & Culture Update

DON’T MISS AN AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE AT HOTA!

Experience treasures from the British Library and the National Portrait Gallery London for the first time in Australia.  

Writers Revealed is your opportunity to explore six centuries of world-famous portraits and rare manuscripts from literacy legends like William Shakespeare, Jane Austin, Lewis Caroll and more.  

For the first time, intimate handwritten manuscripts, letters, illustrations and rare, published editions form the British Library will be seen alongside outstanding portraits of authors on loan from the National Portrait Gallery. An Australian exclusive you do not want to miss! 

NATIONAL GALLERY OF AUSTRALIA: ENJOY THIS TRIP – THE ART OF MUSIC POSTERS

Saturday, 7 June – Sunday, 17 August 

'The musicians were turning up their amplifiers to the point where they were blowing out your eardrums. I did the equivalent with the eyeballs.' Victor Moscoso 

Drawn from the National Gallery’s expansive collection of Australian and international music posters spanning the 1960s to 1980s, Enjoy this trip: The art of music posters captures the spirit of the times as an era of experimentation. 

Journey back to the Summer of Love and be transported to a time when the music was funky, the art was kaleidoscopic, and psychedelia was in full swing. Enjoy this trip presents a nostalgic exploration of the times through art, graphic design, music, colour and typography. 

IT’S A WRAP: MARCO PIERRE WHITE SERIES WRAPS AT HOTA

HOTA’s recent Marco Pierre White series has come to a spectacular close, with all events across the program hailed as a huge success. The legendary chef captivated audiences with his signature wit, culinary insight, and unforgettable storytelling, leaving guests inspired and hungry for more. 

As we wrap up this memorable series, the excitement continues at HOTA with our Sneeky Mid-Weeky offerings.  

These include entry into our world exclusive Writers Revealed exhibition, plus your choice of lunch at our HOTA Café or high tea at Palette, with a glass of wine - to the ever-popular Pizza and Cocktail Masterclass, there’s something to satisfy every appetite and spark every curiosity.   

Who says mid-week has to be mundane? HOTA’s got your escape plan! Whether you're in the mood for thought-provoking conversation, a relaxing midday indulgence, or a hands-on experience with handcrafted flavours and cocktails, keep the inspiration flowing and book your mid-week escape now.  

Don’t miss Sneeky Mid-Weeky, on now until the end of July.  

PERKS OF BEING AN ARTS & CULTURE PRECINCT – MEET DAYAN HARTILL- LAW

At HOTA, Home of the Arts, we pride ourselves on always challenging the status quo to create memorable events. Through our workforce we have a number of skilled creatives who help us push the boundaries in curating experiences. There is no exception when working with our Executive Chef, Dayan Hartill-Law.  

In today’s market we are witnessing a real demand for creative and bespoke menus, how do you approach these requests? 

This is without a doubt my most favourite part of my job here at EGC. To have people be profound, wild, force creativity in response to their brand, their theme. The ideal client is one that says go be free and create something based on this theme.  

We have a storied history of being quite profound from a tree full of floating desserts to a hawker market with banh mi, and Korean fried chicken and countless activations. My team has come to embrace the sentence "so we have this client, and we are going to..." This space is only limited by your imagination, and budget of course, but I love to be creative and responding to a brief in unexpected ways.  

Can you share a little about your passions and how you create memorable event experiences through your culinary output? 

I am passionate about so many things, I love working with our region, with producers and ingredients that are from the southeast, I love to work with grand ideas from clients, this pushes me to be creative in the extreme.  

To create installations, to cook with the ingredients we hold nearest and dearest to our hearts. I also have this metric that I use with my teams as more often than not culinary offering is supplementary to the main event, and the metric that I use is if it is talked about or written about after the fact then we win the game.  

The business event client is looking to book events that celebrate location, how do you lean into this? 

My passion in my professional life is really making our region the champion - we are so incredibly blessed to have the diverse region that we have from a flora and fauna perspective with thousands of endemic species of plant and animal life in the southeast quadrant. So whenever given the opportunity to talk to this and put this in action I like to make it a celebration, partnered with producers in the local area that are doing world leading things the likes of Rocky Point Aquaculture Serena Zipf is being flown around the world to consult on aquaculture projects as her farm is a market leader in the world. 

The Dalton family at Australian Bay Lobster have also gone from strength to strength over the years, and their capacity and spat-to-fully-grown program ensures that there is no depletion of the resource in the wild stock, allowing us to continue utilising a species that is native to us - the Bay Lobster. We are also privileged to have so many incredible native species that I love to collect with my kids and hero throughout the year - from the native ginger plant, Davidson plum, lemon aspen, native tamarind, to riberry - the list is endless.  

It’s more than just food… 

I wanted to also touch on the notion that, for me, this position is a privilege. The opportunities that I have are unlike many others. Because of that, I see it as my duty to the region to hero ingredients, producers and quality. At the same time, I recognise that commerce is king. We have a multimillion-dollar food and beverage program that has choices layered through it - from the produce that we hero right down to the macro of how we talk about it. I like to understand every facet of the producers that we use. You will notice that within Palette, we talk to the name of the farmer as I like to know them - why they do what they do and how they do it. I want to understand their practices, the product of course, but most of all the care they bring to what they do.   

For example, a venison producer that moves the herd to a field of chicory before they are harvested to ensure that the ph. level lifts to have more tenderness. Or the wagyu producer who is using a doppler on the beast whilst alive to see the marble score to adjust the diet prior to being put out to ensure a higher marble score, or fishermen who use single lines and send videos of them reeling in 25kg thumper Spanish Macks, Ike Jime-spiking them as soon as they are on deck. 

These people don't just tell me they love what they do, they show me they are passionate and believe in their choices I see these relationships as partnerships. Together, we can ensure the nation - and hopefully the world - sees South East Queensland for the beauty in its hospitality. With it making up such a large part of what sits at the beating heart of the city - being a multi-billion-dollar industry - we all know that the food we eat in a restaurant, and how a restaurant makes us feel, goes an incredibly long way to achieving the unquantifiable goal of wanderlust in another human. 

This is my north star in the decision-making processes for all of the questions I get asked and it sits at the heart of the decisions we make. If we spend a little more on ham because it is more delicious than another, and that ham and cheese croissant tastes just that little bit more delicious, then why wouldn’t you?