Anador Walsh

Curator and writer Anador Walsh's practice focuses on performance (including dance) in a visual art context.

Walsh is passionate about supporting emerging performance artists, best-practice models of performance presentation and increasing performance literacy in the broader visual art sector. She aims to give performance the critical and structural attention it deserves, as she believes performance is a historically underrepresented visual art medium with growing popularity and presence.

In 2021, Walsh founded Performance Review, a platform for critical engagement with performance through writing. In 2022, in conjunction with Gertrude Contemporary and the Melbourne Art Fair, she expanded Performance Review's mandate to include the presentation of performance programs.

One of its most successful programs, Contact High, explores the relationship between performance and Gertrude Contemporary’s gallery by presenting works of emerging and established artists working at the intersection of performance and visual art. Since its inception, Performance Review has published 48 pieces of performance-centric criticism and presented the work of 17 Australian artists.

The grant project

With the Emerging Artist Grant, Walsh travelled to New York City, USA, in 2023 to attend Performa Biennial and conduct self-directed research into this unique performance-presentation model. During and after the Biennial, she networked with interest-aligned peers, organisations and performance artists in New York.

New York is an internationally recognised hub of performance practice where there is a concentration of respected, long-running performance-centric visual arts organisations and artists from whom Walsh knew she could learn a great deal. This included Performa Biennial’s Directors, Director and Chief Curator of The Kitchen, the Executive Artistic Director of Performance Space New York and the Programming Director of Movement Research Inc.

By immersing herself in Performa Biennial's program and building relationships with New York's visual arts community, Walsh gained a better understanding of the community's relationship with performance practice and how this could be transmuted to Performance Review and further adapted to an Australian context.

Planning a research trip

When asked about what potential applicants need to consider when planning a research trip, Walsh said...

‘I think the answer to this really depends on the type of research trip you're undertaking and whether it's attached to an existing program or residency.

In my case, due to the specificity of my practice, I self-initiated and structured this research trip to fit my own interests and needs, as visual art performance is relatively niche and there are few professional development opportunities available to it.

With this in mind, I asked myself, “What do I need, at this time, to progress my career in the direction I'd like it to go?” The answer I came up with was “To see other visual art performance organisations in practice and to learn which of these practices might be applicable to Performance Review and an Australian context.”

I then used the 2023 Performa Biennial as a centrepiece, around which to construct a research plan that traversed meetings, exhibition and performance attendance, and networking activities that I felt would facilitate this research and further opportunities. This, I should add, was also motivated by a desire to turn this research trip into something practical – specifically an exchange between New York and Australian performance practice.

If I could offer any advice, specifically to someone pursuing their own path of research and development, it would be to really refine what you'd like to achieve or get out of this research opportunity, and to thoroughly research how you might make this opportunity possible. The more work you put into this, the more you get out.’

Future plans

Since this research trip, Walsh has continued to build on the networks she established in the USA and is actively pursuing a New York-Australia performance exchange, which would see artists from these two places present work in each other's contexts.

Working with Gertrude Contemporary, Walsh has secured support from Creative Australia and The Keir Foundation to present Contact High: New York. It will premiere in July 2025 at PAGEANT, an artist-run performing arts theatre that Walsh connected with during her research trip. Artists Brian Fuata, Brooke Stamp and former Cultural Trust dance grantee Rebecca Jensen will perform as part of Contact High: New York from 24–26 July 2025.