Research interests / activities My primary research interests are in the relationship between how nonhuman animals are depicted and what this might have to say about how these animals are thought about and treated. Related to this is an interest in the role that art can play in engaging the viewer with social and/or political issues. I have been actively involved in animal advocacy since the mid 1980s, and my artwork is heavily informed by my activism and my interest in the changing nature of human-animal relations.
Outputs Watt, Yvette (2020). Eating the Problem in Jack Faber and Anna Shraer (Eds) Eco Noir: a Companion for Precarious Times. Academy of Fine Arts, University of Helsinki. https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/322352/eco_noir_2021.pdf
I am a co-editor of, and contributor to the collection of essays titled Considering Animals: Contemporary Studies in Human-Animal Relations (Ashgate, forthcoming) and was commissioned to contribute an entry on ‘Art, Animal and Ethics’ for the Encyclopaedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare, (Marc Bekoff ed., Greenwood Press, 2009).
I have delivered conference papers at the Animals and Society (Australia) Study Group conference at UWA in Perth, 2005, at the Considering Animals conference in Hobart in 2007, and at the Minding Animals Conference at Newcastle University in 2009. I have along history of Animal Advocacy including:
being a committee member of Animal Liberation WA in the mid 1980s and again in the mid 199s
being founding member of Animal Rights Advocates (WA)
being a founding member of Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania
being the Vice President of Animals Australia since 2005
being President then Secretary of the Community Legal Centre for Animal Welfare since its inception in 2008.
I have held many exhibitions since the mid 1980s with the subject matter of the work based on animals and human-animal relations.
