Unpacking the collection: New director appointed to Wollongong Art Gallery

On Wednesday, May 29, Wollongong City Council announced Daniel Mudie Cunningham will take over from retiring director John Monteleone, with the handover to occur in mid August.

While Dr Mudie Cunningham has been making waves as the co-artistic director of Performance Space and director of programs at Carriageworks in Sydney, he's also not an unfamiliar face in the Illawarra.

Wollongong Art Gallery hosted his first career survey exhibition in 2023, entitled 'Are You There?' and Dr Mudie Cunnigham's parents were based in Coledale up until last year.

So in taking on the role as director, Dr Mudie Cunningham said it felt like the right fit.

"Knowing that the role was coming up I was interested because I knew that I could contribute something, having already had a relationship, but also look at how it could be revitalised and re-oriented and done a bit differently."

Currently, Dr Mudie Cunningham is preparing for Cementa 2024, a site specific art festival that transforms the post-industrial town of Kandos, in central-west NSW where he is co-curator with First Nations curator Jo Albany.

But to get a sense of how he might revitalise and re-orient Wollongong Art Gallery, it might be best to look to his work as co-Artistic Director of Performance Space in 2023, which included Liveworks 2023, celebrating 40 years of Performance Space, Australia's leading experimental art organisation, with a focus on live works.

"I do see opportunity for more multidisciplinary activation with the program whether that is thinking about how to activate programs through more performance or live art."

What this might mean in the context of Wollongong Art Gallery is still a work in progress, but a hint could be found in the works exhibited in his retrospective last year, including drag performances at the legendary 1990s institution cLUB bENT - re-enacted for last year's Liveworks - queer narratives of loss and joy and nods to pop and cinema icons of the mid-20th century.

Stepping into the director's role at the regional gallery with one of the largest collections An anywhere in Australia, Dr Mudie Cunningham has a lot of canvas to work with, and as a frequent diver into archives to generate new works and discussions, it is one he is already ready to explore.

"I'm really interested in the histories that are available to us through this collection and bringing other artists in to unpack that collection and respond to it," he said.

"I think that responsiveness is what I'm happy to bring to the role, the idea of unpacking the collection."