Muntjac

Muntjac is a project inspired by a series of personal encounters I have had with the ‘invasive’ muntjac deer across the woodlands of London. The muntjac, originating in China and released into the English wild via Bedfordshire's Woburn Park in the early 1900s are rare to come across. Therefore, these frequent encounters have felt like an invitation to tell stories and make-meaning. They have offered a surprising and generative vessel to think through and reckon with England’s relentless hostility towards, enclosures of and alienation of the brown body across the UK.

At the heart of the work is a series of journaled correspondences conjured from this little brown deer alongside a series of offerings which hold sacred its fleeting presence and humbling revelations. The exhibition and supporting programme of correspondences with co-conspirators contribute to ongoing discourses around who is welcome to and feel joy on this island.

The exhibition is curated by artist-architect-researcher Kirsty Badenoch and takes place at Microscope, an intimate and investigative space for talking, thinking and testing with natural processes.

Becky Lyon is a London-born and based English-Jamaican artist and researcher. She uses art practice to come into relationship with and elicit insights from nature about how to live well alongside each other and explore how our socio-political worlds are and could be shaped with a focus on 'urban' ecological sites. Recurring themes in her work are sensing bodies, tactile processes and the touchy-feely; earthly curriculums and counter-currents; power relations and possibling; softness, oozing and slippery edges; intimacy and quiet resistance. Her work manifests as installations, rituals, photographic objects, handmade moving images and text. She is founder of Ground Provisions - an artist-led, schooled-by-the-forest for grown ups and the Squishy Sessions research collective. She has an MA Art & Science from Central Saint Martins and an MA Art & Ecology from Goldsmiths University of London. In September she will start her PhD under The Centre of Art and Ecology at Goldsmiths. She is a volunteer London National Park City Ranger. She side-hustles as a consultant and trends researcher for global brands.