The Vitalities Lab presents a new salon for sharing arts-led and creative research in the more-than-human worlds we inhabit. This series is organised by Professor Deborah Lupton, Dr Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris, and Dr Anastasia Murney.
Each gathering offers a space for lively exchange across disciplines, exploring how creative methods can illuminate the vitalities that emerge when humans encounter non-human entities – other living beings, the four elements of earth, wind, air, and fire, geological features, and human-made objects, including built environments and digital devices. Bringing together researchers, practitioners, artists, curators, thinkers, and the creatively curious, these salons feature special guests and activities that invite participants to engage with more-than-human entanglements in innovative and surprising ways.
Salon #1: Vanessa Bartlett, Gut Waters
Gut Waters (Bankstown Arts Centre, 26 July–6 September 2025) is a new exhibition that explores the role of the human gut in reimagining our health and place in the world. It connects worlds inside and outside of our bodies, by linking digestion to Bankstown’s wastewater systems, moon cycles, and human poop transplants.
Dr Bartlett will discuss Gut Waters as an outcome of her four year long collaborative medical humanities project Stomach Ache. She will explore the process of translating lived experience-led and medical humanities research into curatorial research and practice, and how this can engender messy, awkward and generative research insights overlooked in more traditional approaches.
Professor Deborah Lupton and Dr Anastasia Murney will also introduce their ARC Discovery project on sociobiological immunity systems and the microbiome and an upcoming workshop in conjunction with Gut Waters on Saturday September 6. The workshop will invite participants to use craft materials to create a body map, encouraging them to think about what goes in and out of the gut, what does it look like, and how does it feel? It is designed to help participants to think differently about digestion.
WHEN: 4 September 2025
TIME: 3pm – 4:30pm
HOW TO JOIN: Via Microsoft Teams. Join the meeting now
Gut Waters, curated by Dr Vanessa Bartlett, exhibition at Bankstown Arts Centre, 26 July – 6 September 2025. Photo: Dean Qiulin Li.
Bios:
Dr Vanessa Bartlett is a visual art curator, arts and wellbeing specialist and artist. She brings art and people together to explore how equality, ethics and social justice are influenced by the medical and technical systems that shape our lives. She specializes in curating exhibitions and creative projects that explore themes of mental and physical health, disability justice and ethics and practices of care. She was McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication (2020–2023), and Research Fellow in the Faculty of Law (2024–2025), at the University of Melbourne.
Professor Deborah Lupton is SHARP Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture, University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, Australia. Her research is interdisciplinary, spanning sociology, media and cultural studies, and often involves arts-based and other creative methods for research and community engagement. She is located in the Centre for Social Research in Health and the Social Policy Research Centre, leading both the Vitalities Lab and the UNSW Node of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. Professor Lupton is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and the Royal Society of NSW and has been awarded two honorary doctorates. She is the author/coauthor of 20 academic books and editor/co-editor of a further 11 volumes.
Dr Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris is an Australian-Swedish curator, writer, and researcher based on Dharug and Gundungurra Country. Her expertise lies in eco-aesthetics, curatorial theory, and water-based methodologies. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow and Senior Research Associate at UNSW within the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S). Bronwyn holds a PhD in curatorial theory and maintains an independent curatorial practice. Her research proposing the Hydrocene as a disruptive epoch is internationally recognized and is the focus of her monograph, The Hydrocene: Eco-Aesthetics in the Age of Water (Routledge, Environmental Humanities Series 2024).
Dr Anastasia Murney is an artist, researcher, and award-winning educator living on unceded Gadigal land. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre for Social Research in Health and The Vitalities Lab at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). She holds a PhD in Art Theory and Visual Culture (2021) and teaches across contemporary art, social movements, and environmental humanities. Anastasia has published her research in international peer-reviewed journals and edited books published by Routledge and Palgrave Macmillan. She has led creative arts workshops at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Wollongong Art Gallery, and Frontyard Projects in Marrickville, Sydney.
Further Information:
Vitalities Lab 