Polite Society's Social Diary - June

Teenage girls can be terrifying – if you don’t have the pleasure of knowing one, there are plenty of movies and shows to enlighten you. While musical Heathers is still touring (currently in Adelaide), the Bell Shakespeare company debuts its take on teen drama this month with Mackenzie, an offbeat retelling of Macbeth. Instead of the ambitious Scottish laird, we have a precocious 13 year old whose ambitious stage mum plots Mackenzie’s to become The Number One Pop Girl in the World. Oh, and there are songs. The Neilson Nutshell, Sydney, June 6-July 18; Arts Centre Melbourne, July 23-August 9

The splendidly named Maximilian Hornung has been described as one of the world’s leading cellists and, at aged 40, he has certainly played with many top orchestras and conductors. For his Sydney solo debut in the intimate Utzon room, Hornung is performing Bach’s Cello Suite, along with Hans Werner Henze’s Serenade for Cello and a piece by American composer Caroline Shaw. If you’d prefer the big orchestra experience, book tickets for Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1, when he’ll be showcasing his talent alongside the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in the concert hall. June 21; and June 11-13; Sydney Opera House

You can head to Buller or Hotham for a little winter sparkle, but more luxurious frosting can be found at the NGV this month, with the opening of CARTIER. This latest iteration of the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series features nearly 400 glittering gems and jewellery from the celebrated French house, tracing its evolution over the past 100 years. Anointed “the jeweller of kings and the king of jewellers” by Edward VII, Cartier produced spectacular pieces for royalty, Hollywood stars and the extremely rich – we mere mortals must be satisfied by staring through glass cases at their extraordinary creations. (And we are – imagine the insurance!) June 12-October 4; NGV Melbourne

Meanwhile, further south, Dark Mofo sets Hobart alight with 12 days of mischief-making and mayhem, which this year includes the Spirit of Tasmania transformed into a floating installation space. Winter Feast returns to the “fiery” banks of the Derwent, with music and performances to entertain guests while they sample tasty Tasmanian delights, while Mona hosts the Sex & Death Day Club and Hardcore, promising a descent into deep time. This year’s burning effigy is a totem-like sculpture, crafted by Balinese artists, of the Pedra Branca skink, a lizard found only on a tiny, windswept island off the south coast. June 11-22; Hobart and Launceston

Less confronting, perhaps, but still awe-inspiring: a Solar Tour at Melbourne Observatory. Held at 1pm on Sundays, starting this month, the tours offer the chance to observe incredible details on the surface of the sun, including sunspots and solar granulation (these look like spots in boiling water – plasma – but each is more than 1,000 kilometres in diameter). You’ll peer through the restored 4-inch Photoheliograph telescope and wonder once more about the infinitesimal part we play in the universe. June 14-August 23; Melbourne Observatory

Rupert Murdoch has long proved a fascinating subject, but what about the people his newspapers and TV networks have targeted? How do they fare once the story breaks? This month’s release of ‘Getting Murdoched’, by well-known journalists and academics Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson, promises to reveal what it’s like to be in the firing line of Murdoch’s outlets, and how some of these people fought back. Out June 30; Hardie Grant

Step out of Sydney’s MCA and you’re in a world of kitsch Aussie mementos, courtesy of the souvenir shops that litter The Rocks. Painted boomerangs, ‘indigenous’ art and fridge magnets – most appropriating indigenous culture but none created by it. First Nations artist Tony Albert has been collecting these items since he was six years old; now more than 3,000 items from his ‘Aboriginalia collection’ (his term) form the core of a new exhibition, Tony Albert: Not a Souvenir. A huge text work dominates one wall, while another displays 450 boomerangs. Don’t miss it. Until October 19; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney