Lia McKnight is an Australian artist and curator based in Perth, WA. Privileging lived experience and emotional geographies as areas of intrigue, her work seeks to speculate on the shifting parameters of identity and context.

Lia has recently been invited to participate in Joondalup CIAA 2017, Stations of the Cross (UCIC) 2017, Tied up with String (Mundaring Arts Centre) 2016 and a dot on the run (FORM) 2016. She was artist in residence at PICA (2016) and is currently working toward a major project in collaboration with Fremantle Arts Centre, March 2018. Lia has undertaken major exhibitions with c3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne (2014), Paper Mountain (2014), free range Gallery (2013), Heathcote Museum and Gallery (2011) and temporary public art commissions for the City of Fremantle (2013) and the City of Subiaco (2011-2012). Many of these projects, produced in collaboration with her long-time partner Stephen Armitstead, were site-specific and engaged within phenomenology. Drawing upon the inherent qualities of materials and their imbedded meanings, her current work extends upon her ongoing interest in the sensual experience of objects. Directly referencing the natural world, themes of memory, ritual and the subconscious coexist with concepts of ‘the endless’ and the interconnectedness of all things.

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, where she studied Curatorial Studies under the legendary and all-round amazing human being Nick Waterlow, before heading back to WA in 2003 to start a family. Completing a Master of Arts, Cultural Heritage at Curtin University in 2005, Lia curated the exhibition, bones of the skin as her major research project which featured established and emerging artists including Julie Rrap and Liam Benson. She is 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), and 50fifty (2017) at the John Curtin Gallery.

Image: studio shot, Fremantle Arts Centre. Photographer, Christophe Canato