Nanette Orly
Curator
Nanette Orly is the Curator of Active Cultures. Currently residing on Wiradjuri Country in Albury, New South Wales, she will be relocating to Los Angeles in 2025. Nanette was previously Senior Curator at Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) where she curated the award-winning exhibition SIMMER (2021), a project featuring local cooks alongside Australian and international artists; BOUND (2022), a presentation of contemporary thread and textile practices; and the biennial National Photography Prize in 2024.
Nanette also created and facilitated the museum’s Radical Book Club (2021-2024), a monthly program that provided an open platform for critical thinking and discussion. Independent curatorial projects include: Transcendence (2018, Firstdraft, Sydney); Full Circle (2018, The Lock-Up, Newcastle); 긴장 (that’s why I get so tired now) by Dana Davenport (2018, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne); Though flowers fall, I have never forgotten you (2019, Peacock Gallery, Sydney); and I will never run out of lies nor love, co-curated with Sebastian Henry-Jones (2019, Bus Projects, Melbourne).
In 2020, Nanette was appointed Chairperson of Runway Journal, a long-running digital publishing platform based in Sydney. During her two-year tenure, she initiated a close review of Runway Journal’s eighteen year old archive and opened the entire archive up to critique with the publication of ‘Issue 42: Archive’. From 2023-24, she sat on the board of un Projects, an independent arts publishing organization based in Melbourne. In 2024, Nanette undertook a curatorial fellowship at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and curated her first international exhibition between the lines (2024) at Openspace Bae in Busan, South Korea. Nanette holds a Master of Curating and Cultural Leadership from the University of New South Wales, Art & Design in Sydney.