Heather Barnett is an artist, researcher and educator working with natural phenomena, complex systems and biological design, often in collaboration with scientists, artists, participants and organisms. Using diverse media including printmaking, photography, animation, video, installation and participatory experimentation, and working with living materials and imaging technologies, her work explores how we observe, represent and understand the world around us. Current work includes The Physarum Experiments, an ongoing ‘collaboration’ with an intelligent slime mould; Animal Collectives Leverhulme Artist in Residence with Swansea University; and a series of collective interdisciplinary bio/social experiments, including Crowd Control and Nodes and Networks.
Heather has held Research Fellowships at the University of Sussex and the London School of Economics, and consulted on arts, health and science projects for organisations such as Willis Newson, the Science Museum, and the Wellcome Trust. As Artist in Residence, Heather has worked with diverse organisations including L’Autre Pied Restaurant, Infoterra Remote Sensing Company, and Poole Hospital Pathology Dept. She has exhibited widely in art galleries, science museums and public venues, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, Science Museum, Wellcome Collection (London), and the New Institute (Rotterdam), and Observatory (New York). Commissions include the Postgraduate Medical Institute (Anglia Ruskin University), Flow (Guy’s Hospital Cancer Day Unit), Small Worlds (The Museum of the History of Science, Oxford University) and The Other Flower Show (Victoria and Albert Museum).
She is Pathway Leader on the MA Art and Science at Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London), a Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellow, regularly consults on interdisciplinary art and science curriculum, and chairs London LASER, a regular talks series exploring art and science. She also led the Broad Vision art/science research and learning project at University of Westminster from 2010-2015.
