Dr Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris is an Australian and Swedish curator, writer and researcher who thinks with water. She developed the concept of the Hydrocene, the Age of Water, a disruptive epoch and curatorial theory mapped across her sole-authored monograph The Hydrocene: Eco-Aesthetics in the Age of Water (Routledge Environmental Humanities Series, 2024). Moving through five case studies across swamp, river, ocean, fog and ice, the book binds feminist environmental humanities with the practices of eco-visionary artists, learning from the knowledge and agency of water itself. The conceptual epoch has since been taken up internationally across art history, environmental humanities, architecture and design.
This watery thinking now extends into her research on artists, data and automated systems. She is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UNSW Sydney within the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S), where she works alongside Professor Deborah Lupton in the Vitalities Lab. Their study examines how the elements are digitised and datafied through the latest digital technologies, including automated decision-making and AI, and how artists engage with and against these systems in ecological contexts. The work forms part of the Centre’s ADM, Ecosystems and Multispecies Relationships project.
Bailey-Charteris maintains an independent curatorial practice committed to water-based and climate-responsive artistic methodologies. Recent projects include Relational Ecologies at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne (2025), and Lithic Bodies at UNSW Galleries and Clifton School of Art (2024), part of a sustained collaboration with Hester since 2019. She was previously curator at Index Foundation, Stockholm, and led the Art and Research program at Accelerator, Stockholm University, and her exhibitions have travelled across Australia and Europe. She also serves as a curator and steering committee member of the Climate Aware Creative Practice Network. She lives and works on Dharug and Gundungurra Country in the Blue Mountains.
Select recent publications
- The Hydrocene: Eco-Aesthetics in the Age of Water (Routledge, 2024), open access: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003397304
- Lupton, D. & Bailey-Charteris, B. (2026). ‘You can’t put the cat back in the bag once it’s out’: Australians’ understandings, practices and imaginaries concerning generative AI. Big Data & Society: https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517261442430
- Lupton, D. & Bailey-Charteris, B. (2026). ‘Just One Prompt Is Enough to Kill a Tree’: Knowledge and Attitudes Concerning the Environmental Impacts of Generative AI Among Australians. Environmental Communication: https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2026.2673346
- ‘The Hydrocene as Disruptive, Embodied, Conceptual Epoch’, European Alternatives (2025): https://euroalter.com/journal/the-hydrocene-as-disruptive-embodied-conceptual-epoch/
- Art criticism for Memo Review, including Shelley Lasica, When I Am Not There (2023): https://www.memoreview.net/authors/bronwyn-bailey-charteris