Kieran Swann is a curator and producer, with twenty years working across and between artforms; gallery-based exhibitions, public art, performance, social practice, co-creation.  He is dedicated to art that creates spaces for relief and resilience; provokes change and exchange; and demonstrates care, generosity, and beauty.

He is currently CEO of Metro Arts, Brisbane’s home for artist development in contemporary and experimental practice.

Kieran is also one half of McCarthy-Swann Projects, a curatorial collaboration that supports contemporary artists to create moments of connection, between artists, audiences, communities and individuals. Past roles include: Senior Curator for Create London, a charity that commissions bold, radical, and socially-engaged art and architecture that is woven into the fabric of everyday life, across East London; Head of Live Programme for Wellcome Collection, a London museum focused on the intersection of art and health; Head of Programme for Arnolfini, Bristol’s international centre for contemporary arts; Program Producer for Theatre Network Australia, the nation’s leading advocacy organisation for the performing arts. He has also worked on festivals and projects with Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Performance Space 122 (now Performance Space New York), Danspace Project, and Venice International Performance Art Week.

Highlight projects include Turner Prize-nominated artist Delaine Le Bas’ Stranger in Silver Walking on Air, an exhibition inspired by Roma & Traveller histories in East London; Adham Faramawy’s Birds of Sorrow, a moving mage work ruminating on water, waste, and life on London’s rivers; Catherine Yass’ Flood Barrier, responding to the impact of climate-crisis related flooding; A House For Artists, a RIBA-award winning ambitious new project providing long-term affordable housing for artists in Barking (all Create London); spearheading a digital response to the COVID pandemic through For All I Care, a five-part podcast reimagining care and healing through the lens of art, health and science (for Wellcome Collection); the redesign and relaunch of Arnolfini’s exhibitions program with Still I Rise, Act 3, a group show with 80+ artists and collective in collaboration with Nottingham Contemporary & De La Warr Pavilion, and securing renewed organisational funding from Arts Council England; presenting Angelica Mesiti’s Assembly direct from Venice Biennale 2019; transforming Amak Mahmoodian’s 2016 TIME Photobook of the Year, Zanjir, into exhibition (all Arnolfini); NETHERWORLDS, an evolving exhibition across Sydney, Melbourne, Gold Coast and Brisbane inspired by marginalised spiritualities and magics; RAZZLE DAZZLE, a city-wide public art program looking at notions of identity, invisibility and hypervisibility; and the dual installations The Weight of Light and The Size of Air by Meagan Streader and Kinly Grey, each working with the most intangible of materials (all McCarthy-Swann Projects).

Kieran has studied at Wesleyan University’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance, in Connecticut USA; Victorian College of the Arts; and Queensland University of Technology.

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