Performance Space is excited to announce our Guest Co-Artistic Directors for 2023 will be outstanding alumni, Rosie Dennis and Daniel Mudie Cunningham who will program and celebrate a very special 40th birthday year.
Our Chair, Janine Collins said, “Performance Space has been developing, producing and presenting some of the most cutting edge work from artists around Australia and the Asia Pacific for decades. The opportunity to celebrate the 40th year in this way was too good to miss! We are so excited to welcome back our own artists who have such a deep love, commitment and understanding of the company, its artists and experimental arts.”
Both Daniel and Rosie are seasoned arts professionals with a long and deep connection to Performance Space. Daniel Mudie Cunningham, currently the new curator for Cementa’s 2024 festival, has a history with Performance Space dating back to the mid-1990s when he participated in cLUB bENT, curated the 2002 Mardi Gras exhibition Flaming Muses, as well as working on several co-commissioned and co-presented works in Liveworks, as Director of Programs at Carriageworks. Daniel says, “I am honoured to take up this guest role. As an artist and curator, Performance Space has played a large part in supporting my work at key moments in my career. Still a vivid memory was the thrill of receiving my very first artist fee, a cheque from Performance Space in 1995. As the company turns 40, and poised at this exciting crossroads, it will be a privilege to work with Rosie Dennis to shape a program that responds to its legacy as a beacon of experimental practice in this country.”
Rosie Dennis is currently the CEO and Artistic Director at Placemakers on the Gold Coast, and has worked as a publicist, performer and Board member of Performance Space over the last 20 years. Rosie says “In the national cultural landscape, Performance Space is one of a kind. I'm excited by the potential of the program that Daniel Mudie Cunningham and I are visioning to mark and honour four decades of experimental practice and the people who’ve been part of the success of this incredible organisation.“
Vanessa Lloyd, CEO at Performance Space is “so pumped to work with Rosie and Daniel on this very special program. I have known and respected both for many years and look forward to working closely with them in 2023 while we recruit our new Artistic Director. Having Rosie and Daniel on board allows us to focus all our energies on celebrating Performance Space’s 40th year”
Dr Daniel Mudie Cunningham
An independent curator and critic renowned for his work with contemporary Australian artists and collections. He is also an artist whose work over three decades is the subject of a survey exhibition at Wollongong Art Gallery in mid 2023. Recently, he was appointed the Curator of Cementa24. Previously, he was the Director of Programs and Senior Curator at Carriageworks from 2017–2022, where he worked with Performance Space, most notably on Cherine Fahd’s Ecdysis as co-curator with Jeff Khan in 2021. He has also held leadership and curatorial roles at Artbank and Hazelhurst Arts Centre, and teaching and research positions at Western Sydney University, where he completed a BA Honours (First Class) in Art History and Criticism in 1997 and a PhD in Cultural Studies in 2004. Notable recent work includes projects with Reko Rennie, Mel O'Callaghan, Karla Dickens, Dean Cross and Tina Havelock Stevens, among others; curating The National 2019: New Australian Art; and initiating Suspended Moment: The Katthy Cavaliere Fellowship which partnered Carriageworks with ACCA and Mona by commissioning major new works by Frances Barrett, Sally Rees and Giselle Stanborough. Suspended Moment was adapted as an exhibition that is touring to eight venues from 2022–2023 through Museums and Galleries of NSW.
Rosie Dennis
A well-respected arts leader who is best known for curating and delivering large-scale cultural experiences connected to place. Rosie is the current Artistic Director and CEO of Placemakers* Gold Coast, one of south-east Queensland’s leading contemporary arts organisations who is best known for delivering the annual BLEACH* and BIG CITY LIGHTS festivals. Prior to joining Placemakers*Rosie was the Artistic Director and CEO of Urban Theatre Projects (UTP). During her tenure with UTP Rosie curated the award winning BANKSTOWN:LIVE, conceived and directed the theatrical triptych, Home Country and directed two documentaries, Bre & Back and One Day for Peace which have screened on SBS and ABC respectively. Rosie was the inaugural Creative Director of Hobart Current: Liberty From Here to Here (2021) which commissioned ten new works for the Tasmanian Museum and Gallery and City of Hobart. Rosie’s solo performance work has been presented at more than 25 festivals across Central Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Rosie’s first work at Performance Space was part of unBecomings, curated by Fiona Winning, for Mardi Gras, 2000.