Stomach Ache: Curating with Guts [UK launch]

You are invited to join the UK launch of ‘Stomach Ache’, an international research project and network that explores how digestive dysfunction can provoke new ways of representing lived experience in creative and curatorial practice. The session will include an informal presentation from Lead Researcher Dr Vanessa Bartlett (University of Melbourne) and Network Co-Leader Dr Rachel Marsden (UAL), focusing on the project to date, and opportunities for collaboration with the network in 2024-25.

The gut and gut microbiome loom large in the popular, scientific and artistic imagination. However, epidemiological research suggests that complex, chronic and undiagnosed gut issues are rising around the globe. ‘Stomach Ache’ explores how this widespread digestive dysregulation highlights the gap between cutting-edge science and everyday lived experiences, and how this can be explored and ameliorated through visual art.

For the UK launch, we welcome artists, researchers, curators and students interested in equity and diversity in complex interdisciplinary fields such as art-science, medical humanities and creative health to join us.

Our aims for this session are to:

• Create an opportunity for knowledge exchange and potential for future collaboration
• Incorporate a plurality of voices into the project development
• Align our work to wider needs of the field

To RSVP, please register via the Eventbrite here.

Any questions, please email: [email protected] or [email protected]

For more info on ‘Stomach Ache’

The network is supported by Durham University’s Northern Network for Medical Humanities Research (NNMHR) New Networks in Critical Medical Humanities Funding Scheme, and Wellcome Trust. More info on the associated NNMHR network here.

Image credit line: Amelia Hine. Moving image artwork commissioned for the ‘Stomach Ache’ website (2022)

Researcher Biographies:

Dr Vanessa Bartlett is a curator and interdisciplinary research leader who uses art to help people respond to rapid technological, scientific and ecological change. Drawing on her own lived experiences, she explores how medical and technical systems shape equity, ethics and social justice, particularly for disabled and chronically ill folk. Her curated exhibitions exploring the psychosocial impacts of digital cultures have been seen at international arts spaces such as FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), UNSW Galleries and Furtherfield and have featured in The Guardian, Creative Review and BBC Radio 4. She has edited two books for award-winning academic publisher Liverpool University Press, the most recent of which was co-edited with Professor Henrietta Bowden Jones, one of the UK’s most high-profile neuroscience researchers. She leads several interdisciplinary creative practice projects including AAIDE: The Art, AI and Digital Ethics Network, which advances a decentered ethics of AI, informed by decolonial, ecocritical and creative practice methods. She was Mckenzie Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication (2020-2023), and a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Law (2023), at University of Melbourne. She is the lead researcher on the Stomach Ache project. An archive of her past work is available at vanessabartlett.com

Dr Rachel Marsden is a curator, researcher and educator interested in practice-research, creative methods, inclusive pedagogies and ethics of care. This work is informed by her practice in arts and creative health, social prescribing and lived experience of chronic illness and dynamic disability. Currently, she is Senior Lecturer in Academic Practice at University of the Arts London, including MA and PhD supervisions, at University of the Arts London (UAL, part-time). She is also a member of UAL’s Health, Arts and Design (HEARD) research hub and on the Advisory Board for UAL’s ‘Better Making’ social prescribing hub. In addition to her involvement as a researcher and co-network lead for 'Stomach Ache', Rachel is undertaking the research project 'Mapping Creative Health Assets: Mobilising Arts-based Interventions to Tackle Health Inequalities in Staffordshire.' This is a funded 'Transdisciplinary Placement' from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), School for Public Health Research (SPHR), situated within the PHRESH (Public Health RESearch for Health) consortium, with Keele University and University of Birmingham until May 2024. In recent years, she has provided freelance consultancy, project management and training to Manchester Museum, Birmingham City Council, Warwickshire County Council, Manchester City Council and Culture Coventry (CVLife). Since April 2022, in a Voluntary capacity, Rachel has advocated for the creative health sector via her role as Regional Champion (West Midlands) for the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance (CHWA), and is also a member of the International Association of Arts Critics (AICA).

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

The Doctoral School, 2nd Floor, High Holborn, UAL, London, United Kingdom