Science Gallery Melbourne: BLOOD

Curated by Creative Director Dr Ryan Jefferies, I produced the inaugural season, BLOOD, in 2017, working on both the exhibition and the accompanying public programme. The role required overseeing the creation a pop-up gallery from the ground up — transforming a former study hall into a dynamic space for art-science encounters — and shaping a season that demonstrated the potential of this experimental model while engaging diverse audiences in research-centred experiences.

Exhibition Production

As producer for the exhibition, I collaborated closely with artists and the Science Gallery Melbourne team to realise their projects within the adaptive pop-up space. This involved translating concepts into practical, site-responsive artworks, coordinating logistics and technical requirements, and ensuring that artworks were exhibited safely, effectively, and in dialogue with the broader season themes. My work supported both the integrity of individual artworks and the cohesion of the exhibition as a whole, allowing the season to operate as a credible, immersive art-science showcase despite the lack of a permanent gallery.

Public Program Leadership

Alongside production of the exhibition, I led the design and delivery of an innovative public programme. Building on the exhibition content, I extended concepts and artworks into participatory workshops, events, talks and performances that invited audiences to engage directly with the science and artistic processes underpinning the projects. This required developing creative formats, commissioning or collaborating with additional facilitators, and curating audience pathways that deepened understanding and provoked dialogue. The public programme was designed to reach a wide range of participants — from students and academic researchers to local communities — and to expand the impact of the exhibition beyond its physical displays, and to raise brand awareness for future seasons. Moving beyond traditional notions of gallery programming, I developed a content strategy, season-specific narratives and innovative formats that provided opportunities to initiate such dialogue with key audiences; many of which will play a vital role in the continued success of the gallery.

Highlights and innovations in both exhibition and public program included:

Ambitious collaboration facilitation

Throughout the season, the team and I developed and facilitated multiple interdisciplinary collaborations. One example is Blood Objects. Created by artist Basse Stittgen, these are plastic products made from blood. Originally just made from pig's blood, for the BLOOD season we had the aspiration to commission objects that included blood from people living with blood borne diseases, and display them as interactive objects.

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Working closely with Basse, we facilitated collaborations between individuals living with HIV and Hepatitis C, and an industrial engineer to produce the work. Additionally, we worked with the university's medical and research teams to meet all health and safety requirements in order to allow the work to be handled by visitors.

Developing new formats

I saw the opportunity for the programming to become a site of emerging knowledge in dialogue with publics. For example, You Beaut is an installation made from icing and sweets that represents uterine bleeding in a humorous and uplifting manner that encourages open discussion. Commissioned as an artwork for the main exhibition, I saw the opportunity to open up new conversations through the contribution of people with diverse lived experiences related to this topic.

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I brought together the artists, the Hotham Street Ladies, with pathologists from the University of Melbourne and co-developed an event for the public program where people ‘graffitied’ uteruses onto the walls of one of Melbourne's famous graffiti laneways using sugar icing.

It was fun. It shocked. It was intriguing. The emotions and reactions that attendees (and people who stumbled across the event) had permitted friends and strangers to have conversations about uteruses, vaginas, and menstruation - something that is still very much a taboo for many.

Embedding research into public engagement

The smell of blood is produced by a single molecule, which triggers an innate, physiological response. Sentience was an immersive work designed to explore this response. I saw the opportunity for the artists, Ollie Cotsaftis and Sarah McArthur, to collaborate with scientists to investigate this further. Inspired by the artistic question, a research experiment was integrated into the exhibition, providing further opportunities for dialogue and expertise sharing. Researcher Stefan Bode facilitated the running of an experiment which investigated whether the smell of blood makes us hungry.

Delivering the inaugural Science Gallery Melbourne season required combining strategic vision, creative problem-solving, and extensive relational leadership. I drew on expertise in exhibition production, cross-disciplinary collaboration, site-responsive programming, participatory public engagement, and stakeholder negotiation to deliver both the exhibition and public programme. By designing experiences that leveraged the unique capacity of art-science to provoke curiosity, spark dialogue, and generate unexpected connections between people, ideas, and disciplines, I enabled audiences to encounter research in new, immersive ways. This approach not only supported artists in realising ambitious work within a temporary space, but also strengthened institutional capacity for experimental programming, demonstrating how art-science can create meaningful engagement, inspire reflection, and open up new ways of thinking about complex research in public contexts.