About


I am a visual art curator, arts and wellbeing specialist and occasional artist. I bring art and people together to explore how equality, ethics and social justice are influenced by the medical and technical systems that shape our lives. I specialise in curating exhibitions and creative projects that explore themes of mental and physical health, disability justice and ethics and practices of care.


I have worked between the arts, university, and health sectors for almost two decades. I devised and co-curated the groundbreaking exhibition Group Therapy: Mental Distress in a Digital Age, with FACT, UK. This radical arts-health-technology collaboration was funded by Arts Council England, The Royal College of Art, The Wellcome Trust, The British Psychological Society and Johnston and Johnston, and was one of the most popular exhibitions in the organisation’s history. I have worked as Performance Programmer at one of England’s most cherished centres for contemporary art. I worked on teams that delivered major public art events for Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture year, including staging art interventions in the city’s largest hospitals.

Collaborative methods inform the design of my exhibitions and research projects. I have worked with military veterans, people with chronic pain and groups of young people to curate and evaluate exhibitions and art interventions that help audiences rethink what wellbeing means in an unstable and inequitable present. I have won prestigious awards for this work, such as the McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Melbourne.

I forge wild new connections between people and ideas, always pushing for more equitable and collaborative way of being in the world. I am able to encourage and energise people to explore these wild new connections with me.

Reach out to me at info@vanessabartlett.com. Or join my mailing list to receive my newsletter three times a year.



Key Skills:

  • curating
  • collaboration between artists, scientists and medical experts
  • interdisciplinary relationship building

Research Interests:

  • critical medical humanities
  • curating health and lived experience 
  • cultural reception of emerging technologies
  • arts-based research

Collaborators, funders and partners:

  • AND, Abandon Normal Devices Festival, UK
  • Artlands North Kent
  • Arts Council England
  • The Big Anxiety Festival, Sydney, AU
  • The Bluecoat, Liverpool, UK
  • Central St Martins, University of the Arts London
  • FACT, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool, UK
  • FutureEverything, Manchester, UK
  • Grey Projects, Singapore
  • Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane, AU
  • Liverpool Biennial, UK
  • Liverpool John Moores University, UK
  • Mobile Academy, Berlin, DE
  • Mondriaan Fund, NE
  • Science Gallery Melbourne, AU
  • Science Gallery Atlanta, USA
  • Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
  • Queensland University Art Museum, AU
  • Tate Liverpool, UK
  • University of Chester, UK
  • University of Melbourne, AU
  • University of New South Wales, AU
  • University of Technology (UTS), Sydney, AU
  • Victoria and Albert Museum, UK
  • Wellcome Collection, UK
  • Wellcome Trust, UK

Links: 

  • Access Rider 
  • CV



info@vanessabartlett.com


I live and work on Bidjigal and Gadigal land. I pay my respects to custodians past, present and emerging by revering the land and paying the rent. Always was, always will be. 



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