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Lia McKnight is an Australian artist and curator based in Waylyup/Fremantle, WA who works across drawing, sculpture, textiles and installation. Her current practice finds inspiration in the natural world to explore themes of life, death, sex and magic. Captivated by the idea of secret worlds pulsing and thriving beyond our awareness, Lia’s darkly humorous drawings and sculptures are at once alluring and disarming. They appear like mental maps to a strange and erotic terrain where suppressed desires and fears emerge as eerie dreamscapes. Intrigued by concepts of transformation and the interconnectedness of all things, McKnight’s work speculates on the nature of being by referring to the everyday alchemy of growth and decay.
Privileging lived experience and emotional geographies as areas of intrigue in both her curatorial and art practices, her research seeks to speculate on the shifting parameters of identity and context. Lia graduated from Edith Cowan University with a BA Visual Arts in 1997. She began a Master of Arts Administration at COFA, UNSW in 2002, before heading back to WA in 2003 to start a family. Shecompleted a Master of Arts, Cultural Heritage at Curtin University in 2005. She is currently the Collection Manager at the John Curtin Gallery, Curtin University and most recently curated the exhibitions Post-hybrid: reimagining the Australian self (2015), ASSEMBLAGE (2016), 50fifty (2017) and 50fifty:2020 (2020) at the John Curtin Gallery. |