Heather Tweed

Heather Tweed is a visual artist, researcher and writer based near Bristol with a practice spanning over twenty-five years.

 

Her exhibition and installation work has been shown at the Venice Biennale, OXO Tower Wharf, Old Truman Brewery and Edinburgh Fringe. She won first prize in The Millfield Open. One of two British artists selected for the British Council’s international Crossing Cultures partnership in Cairo and Alexandria, her work has been supported by Arts Council England, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the British Council, and covered by The Guardian, The Independent and the BBC. She has been selected as Saatchi Online Critic’s Choice and Saatchi Video Artist of the Week three times.

 

She dives deep into primary sources, 19th century newspaper reports, census records and local and national archives to recover and reweave the hidden stories of once famed circus, music hall and menagerie performers. Her research has been cited in two PhD theses and published in the Public Domain Review, Ripperologist Magazine, Historians Magazine and Strandlines. She has spoken at the British Music Hall Society conference and curated Carnivalé at Fringe Arts Bath 2026.

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She is a member of the Society of Authors (Bristol organiser), the Royal Historical Society and the British Music Hall Society.

 

The visual and the written works intermingle, drawn from the same source, an obsession with the overlooked and the extraordinary.