Nanette Orly
Curator
Nanette Orly is the Curator of Active Cultures. 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.