Mighty Healthy

Mighty Healthy presents current UNSW Art & Design student work which challenges social health issues, explores applications in therapeutic contexts and attempts to extend the frontiers of medical engineering. A sense of ambition, social responsibility and commitment to the design process underpins this very human-centered account of young design practice.

Applying new materials, fabrication processes, and experimental concepts to address health issues, the projects generate a range of speculative models and grounded strategies. Some engage with serious social health issues of binge drinking, sexual health and steroid abuse, by employing interactive, humorous grass-roots graphics campaigns. 

On a more intimate scale, therapeutic environments and objects offer unexpected remedial applications for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and people with dementia. Bridging generational divides in dementia care, innovative designs facilitate connections between children and grandparents, prioritising the social bond.

Similarly, a project reclaiming and pedestrianising of public space highlights the role of lifestyle in social and individual wellbeing. Entering the territory of the engineer, the potential of prosthetics technology is harnessed to advantage the user in an energy-consuming environment.

Mighty Healthy delivers the intersection of art and design practice with health research, an area currently going through a period of rapid expansion, and demonstrates how these seemingly disparate trajectories mutually enrich each other.

Artists include Scott Brown, Rochel Chen, Costa Damaskos, Luke Thomas Fussell, Peter Hong, Florence Legg-Bagg, Sophia Ng, Kelly O’Gara, Tara Ostrowski, Lauren Scarcella and Catherine Smith. Curated by Ali Groves.