These things becoming
c3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne 1 - 19 October, 2014
free range Gallery, Perth 5 - 13 October 2013
First exhibited in 2013 at Perth ARI free range gallery, Lia McKnight’s entropic constructions and process driven surfaces have been developed and adapted to consider the particular character and architectural elements of the C3 Art Space galleries.
these things becoming presents a series of material investigations that are time-based and fundamentally experimental, revealing an interest in phenomenology and the sensual experience of objects. McKnight uses recycled and everyday materials (salt, recycled clothing, foil, plywood) to explore themes of beauty, ephemerality, loss and the endless. Her works on paper and ply are abstract voids and Rorscharch-like psychological spaces: mental maps, to an uncanny terrain. Here the use of inversion (or mirror-image) emerges as a common visual element, revealing an interest in apparent dualities and the connectivity of ‘opposites’.
In her use of kinetic objects, everyday materials and reflective surfaces – many of which utilise or consider inherent physical and architectural aspects of the space, McKnight draws our focus back to the act of looking. This amplification of perception through movement, materiality and mirror is intended to reposition or re-frame the space and the viewer within it – to allow the viewer to simultaneously see and be part of the space and it’s objects.
Expansive rhythms – geometric patterns and kinetic forms – are generated to explore unfolding/enfolding spaces of contemplation. Considering the interrelationship between object and viewer as a dynamic exchange, McKnight is interested in the way in which: “These things inside the Gallery – the objects, the walls, the people, the spaces between things – hold, always, the potential to transform into something else: becoming a whole thing, if only momentarily . . . a one thing”.
these things becoming presents a series of material investigations that are time-based and fundamentally experimental, revealing an interest in phenomenology and the sensual experience of objects. McKnight uses recycled and everyday materials (salt, recycled clothing, foil, plywood) to explore themes of beauty, ephemerality, loss and the endless. Her works on paper and ply are abstract voids and Rorscharch-like psychological spaces: mental maps, to an uncanny terrain. Here the use of inversion (or mirror-image) emerges as a common visual element, revealing an interest in apparent dualities and the connectivity of ‘opposites’.
In her use of kinetic objects, everyday materials and reflective surfaces – many of which utilise or consider inherent physical and architectural aspects of the space, McKnight draws our focus back to the act of looking. This amplification of perception through movement, materiality and mirror is intended to reposition or re-frame the space and the viewer within it – to allow the viewer to simultaneously see and be part of the space and it’s objects.
Expansive rhythms – geometric patterns and kinetic forms – are generated to explore unfolding/enfolding spaces of contemplation. Considering the interrelationship between object and viewer as a dynamic exchange, McKnight is interested in the way in which: “These things inside the Gallery – the objects, the walls, the people, the spaces between things – hold, always, the potential to transform into something else: becoming a whole thing, if only momentarily . . . a one thing”.