Shifting Centre

Nanette Orly (NSW) & Andy Butler (VIC)

  • Auslan interpreting
  • Language no barrier
  • Wheelchair access

Co-commissioned with West Space

The centre is shifting, peripheries are becoming prominent and we are experiencing a push to diversify discourses within our cultural institutions – to bring the outside into the centre. However, there are limitations and performative expectations placed on artists, writers, and curators working within this space.

In this process-driven exhibition, Nanette Orly and Andy Butler explore curatorial modes of collaboration, shared knowledge, and community building, working to create space for artists to enact resistance, resilience, and artistic practice that pushes against the narrow limits of diversity discourse.

Creating a dialogue between Moorina Bonini, Sean Miles, Aida Azin and Shan Turner-Carroll, Shifting Centre marks the final project at Testing Grounds before the venue closes permanently, and pays tribute to a site that has supported experimental, artist-led practices against the backdrop of the Southbank’s most ‘centred’ cultural institutions.

Content Warnings

Some works in this exhibition contain mature themes. 

Mature themes: references to current environmental, cultural and political issues which may cause distress to some audience members. 

Read more (possible spoilers)…

Supported by Testing Grounds and the Victorian Government through the Multicultural Festivals and Events program.

Curated by Andy Butler and Nanette Orly
Featuring Moorina Bonini, Sean Miles, Aida Azin and Shan Turner-Carroll  

Nanette Orly is a curator based in Sydney. Her practice is deeply engaged with themes surrounding identity development, cultural histories and offering alternative perceptions of contemporary society. Drawn to migratory aesthetics to form interdisciplinary group or collaborative exhibition concepts, Orly has curated exhibitions across a number of Sydney, regional and interstate galleries over the past five years. She is currently the Co-Director of Cold Cuts Project Space and Board Member of Runway Australian Experiment Art. Orly has also been a successful participant in 4A Curators’ Intensive 2018 and was awarded Project Curator of the Critical Animals Research Symposium 2018.

Andy Butler is a writer, curator and artist. His writing on art and politics has been published widely, including by The Monthly, The Saturday Paper, Art + Australia, Overland and Runway, and in publications for major arts institutions. He has curated exhibitions and exhibited his own work at artist run and public galleries, read or performed at national and international writers’ festivals, and undertaken writing and artist residencies in Australia and overseas. His practice interrogates how dynamics of race and power shape cultural production. He sits on the board of SEVENTH Gallery and is a co-director of Mailbox Art Space.