Rebecca Lyon

Katt is an artist-researcher-practitioner creating strange, playful work shaped by mischief, memory and nature, where reality and fiction blur through mythology and self-reflection. She is undertaking an AHRC-funded CDP PhD at the University of Portsmouth with Portsmouth Natural History Museum, exploring how regional museums can reimagine interactions with natural history collections through participatory creative methods and research-through-design, using emerging technologies within an attunement-led approach. Influenced by poetry, folklore and speculative practice, she brings stories to life through found, stolen and fabricated artefacts, prototypes and sensory encounters, and is drawn to the unreliable narrator as a form of mischief.

I am an award-winning visual artist using moving image to create video art and installations, often incorporating multidisciplinary, site-specific and live artworks. The main focus of my work is how art and technology can be used to explore the embodiment of space by the self and other, while challenging notions of absence and presence, real and simulated, and live versus mediated experience. I use specialised equipment and innovative filmmaking techniques to engage audiences, allowing them to bring their own sense of self and experiences to the artworks.

I am a photographer passionate about social documentary, environmental portraiture, and visual sociology. I try to place ethics at the core of my practice, often working in socially engaged ways and via partner negotiation and collaboration. Previously I was a firefighter for 24 years, and then transitioned to event production, working globally with renowned clients like Duke Dumont, Wu-Tang Clan, Pusha T and many others. After leaving the touring life, I earned a BA and MFA in photography (with distinction) at the University for the Creative Arts and now here I am doing what I love.