Rebecca is a UK-based visual artist with a focus on documentary photography. Working mainly in cities, she is interested in how life responds to limitations, boundaries and control. Exploring topics such as migratory birds and expression through traditional dance, she uses multi-media approaches to reflect on what happens when the natural/free-thinking and manmade/rigid co-exist, what comes into being as a result of the tensions and dependencies between these two worlds. Current projects include Fly Over My City, which looks at Common swifts in collaboration with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Rebecca puts research at the core of her practice and combines drawing, photography, film and audio to make immersive exhibitions and installations. She places a high value on documentary photography being accessible, open-minded and providing an informed platform for discussion across divides. She recently curated and exhibited her MA project Manifestations: Lion Dance and I on the topic of a disappearing art form, traditional Cantonese lion dance, in a solo show in London, in collaboration with Charing Cross Library and London-based Pak Mei Tang Cho Tak Kung Fu Association and Lion Dance Troupe. In 2023 she completed her MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication, University of Arts London.

Rebecca was born in Oxford and lived the first five years of her life in a nearby village where the first described dinosaur was found. Following a love of natural history, she originally studied science, reading biology at Oxford University and taxonomy and biodiversity at Imperial College London. After working for a short period as a researcher on insect evolution at Imperial, she spent some time teaching in Spain, then worked as a policy advisor for the UK government for 14 years across issues such as EU fisheries negotiations, the low carbon economy and human rights. In 2015 she was recognised for her work on women’s equality in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list. She is a fellow of the Linnean Society of London.

Exhibitions

• September and October 2023 Manifestations: Lion Dance and I, a self-curated mixed media two-day installation and talk in collaboration with Tang’s Pak Mei and Celestial Peach at the Charing Cross Library, London
• June 2023 Fly Over My City, a mixed media exhibition as part of UAL graduation show at Free Range, London

Education

• 2001-2004 BA Biological Sciences – Merton College, University of Oxford
• 2005-2006 MSc Advanced Methods in Taxonomy and Biodiversity – Imperial College London
• 2021-2023 MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography (Distinction) – London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

Awards

• 2015 Medallist of the Order of the British Empire for services to gender equality – interviewed in The Guardian