We continuously venture into new creative terrain, blending science and art in unexpected ways to connect with people who might not typically engage with scientific concepts and research.
Each year, we present our Science Photography Prize and CoLab Sci-Art exhibitions, and showcase innovative art pieces in Beaker Street Festival, with some of our recent highlights outlined below.
Feature image: Nanna Bayer’s exhibition ‘I Know You Are There’ at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. Photograph by Dearna Bond.
- Adrift Lab (2024): A striking installation at Detached Gallery (Old Mercury Building) revealing the devastating impact of marine plastic on seabirds through powerful visual storytelling.
- Life/Cycle Development Showing (2024): A live performance showcasing the experimental stages of the final instalment of Jane Longhurst’s Black Bag Trilogy at Detached Gallery (Old Mercury Building).
- Through Our Eyes (2024): Bringing the southernmost continent closer to a large audience a the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery through an imaginative multimedia installation focussed on women and their personal and professional relationship with Antarctica.
- Floe (2024): A sound and light installation created by Philip Samartzis and Cary Littleford for the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery exterior and welcome garden, building on Philip’s experience as an Australian Antarctic Arts Fellow and soundtracks.
- Late Night Festival Club (2024): A dazzling queer cabaret with a double-shot of science, featuring music composed and performed by Stevie McEntee and the Beaker Street House Band, performances by Hera Fox, a vaginal vignette led by Tiana Pirtle, alongside a brilliant cast of musos, muses, and mischief-makers. Curated by Rosie Pidd and performed at Hobart City Hall.
- Sonic Map (2023, 2024): Composed and curated by Stevie McEntee, Sonic Map is a live sound installation featuring local musicians guiding the public from venue to venue. Born from a need for more accessible forms of wayfinding, it became an unforgettable requiem to the streets of Hobart.
- Menopause in Four Acts (2023): A sharp, funny, and insightful theatre performance by actor Jane Longhurst and Women’s Health GP Dr Natasha Vavrek, tackling the hot topic of menopause to sold-out audiences at Hobart’s Theatre Royal
- Light Forest (2023): Fresh from Vivid Festival, a grove of stump lights created by blind artist Duncan Meerding sprouted in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery welcome garden.
- Melodic Table of Elements (2023): An interactive concert by Django’s Tiger, where the audience is encouraged to playfully manipulate the various elements of music like tempo, key, mode, and style.
- Winterriese (2022): Schubert’s achingly beautiful meditation on mortality for solo voice and piano, set in a world of ice and rain, by Archipelago Productions under the direction of Ben Winspear.
- When Water Falls (2022): A ensemble of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander singers and musicians from nations all over Australia, lifting their voices to the night air, exploring the meaning of rain, water, and place in their lives, merged with insights into renewable energy, environmental science, digital tech.
- No Entry While Mill Is Operating (2022): An immersive work from Soma Lumia featuring lights, projections and soundtrack designed especially for the reverberant environment of the Spring Bay Mill Bunker, tracking the human impact and nature’s response, as it seeking to reclaim its space.
- Request Programme (2022): A devastating rendition of Franz Xaver Kroetz’s play, exquisitely performed by Jane Longhurst.
- Conducting an Experiment (2022): Conductor Ingrid Martin and musicians from the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra explored the invisible language of conducting—translating a composer’s intent into movement and uniting strangers into a seamless musical force.
- Vitro+Vitae (2022): An installation of marine and eukaryotic organisms—bluebottle jellyfish, nudibranchs, fungi and slimemoulds—created in glass by Helene Boyer and exhibited at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
- I Know You Are There (2021): Finnish artist Nanna Bayer transformed TMAG’s Bond Store Basement into a surreal microscopic world, exhibiting ceramic and mixed-media “beings” inspired by diatoms, slime moulds, tardigrades, viruses, bacteria, and fungi.
- SciArt Walks (2020): A podcast series combining nature and knowledge through self-guided walks, featuring original music composed by 10 Australian creators.
Reimagining the ‘scientific presentation’
In 2022-23, Beaker Street launched an ambitious creative experiment, pairing artists and scientists to transform research into a multi-sensory experience, making complex ideas gripping, accessible, inclusive, and unforgettable.
Three artist-scientist duos dove in as active participants, sparking unexpected connections, speculative ideas, and new ways of seeing the world. Curated by Lucy Bleach and Theia Connell, the project brought together:
- Priscilla Beck (artist) with Dr Shasta Henry (entomologist)
- Dean Greeno (artist) with Sarah Lloyd OAM (naturalist and slime mould expert)
- Reptrillion Culture Club (experimental sound artists) with Dr Karelle Siellez (astrophysicist)
Through field trips, deep conversations, and months of exchange, the artists crafted speculative responses to the scientists’ work—uncovering surprising synergies between scientific inquiry and creative practice. The result? Not just works in progress, but a fresh way of thinking about how art and science shape and inspire each other.
One collaboration—Reptrillion Culture Club and Dr Karelle Siellez—gave audiences a glimpse into their evolving work during a live performance at Beaker Street Festival in the Long House. Watch the video below to experience it for yourself.
