About

Email    catherinemhaynes[at]gmail.com

CATHY HAYNES is a curator, writer, artist and educator based in London. She has been researching, writing, and developing a creative practice on aspects of time for more than two decades.

As Timekeeper in residence in 2013 at UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London, Cathy led a multi-disciplinary AHRC-funded research project, discussion programme and exhibition on the cultural history of how we picture time (ranging from a many-horned goat to a sun-tracking flower) in collaboration with scholars from archaeology, ancient history, philosophy, science, psychology and architecture. The project created a model of engagement that has since been adopted widely across UCL culture.

As Chisenhale Gallery’s artist in residence in Victoria Park, London, she made Stereochron Island (2014), a project that reimagines the park as a tiny island territory campaigning to become a state without clocks.

In her wider work, Cathy has been Head of Academy at Scriberia, a founding faculty member at The School of Life, London, and Curator for Art on the Underground (Transport for London). As Head of Interaction at Artangel in the early 2000s, she devised and co-commissioned its pioneering Nights of London programme of projects by artists and writers exploring the nocturnal city with people who stay awake, work or watch over it.

Cathy has been a guest contributor to the Digital Human and Human Zoo programmes on BBC Radio 4, and the Weekly show on Monocle 24 Radio. She has written for The Guardian and co-created a series of mini-publications inserted in Cabinet Magazine.

She has given guest lectures and workshops for many cultural and academic organisations, including the British Council/UCL Museum Training School, D&AD (President’s Lecture series), the Royal College of Art’s MA in Curating Contemporary Art, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and How the Light Gets In philosophy festival in Hay-on-Wye.

Cathy holds an MA (dist.) in Media and Communications (1997) from Goldsmiths University of London, and a BA (1st Class) in Social and Political Sciences (1995) from Cambridge University.

Photo: Rhys Frampton, 2025