Lia McKnight – Drawings
This review of Lia McKnight’s
drawing praxis is via the internet as there is no possible way at the moment to
see the artworks live in Perth due to the corona virus. Even though there is a pandemic at the moment which curtails travelling to
see McKnight’s artworks, they can be reviewed via the internet as current technology allows good visual
scrutiny.
Plume, 2019
ink, pencil, graphite,
gouache and archival pen on 640 gsm Arches paper, 38 x 28 cm
I photograph natural patterns, strange
tree forms, fungi and delicate orchids. Sometimes I take home small findings
that sit beside me in my studio. These objects seem to stare back at me,
asserting a kind of dignified and humble sacredness.
Lia Mcknight -Turner Galleries
The above artwork by McKnight titled:
Plume, 2019 is a stunningly elegant drawing full of curiosity and charm with a
hint of menace of something lurking. Even now living in Japan the remembrances
of wandering through the Australian
coastal bush, with these drawn motifs
like Plume 2019 still resonate strong in my memory and they contain a visually seductive alien quality to them,
this is in most part due to the excellent observed analysis of the found object
coupled with a drawing praxis sensibility that enable her to communicate these
sensations (memories) through drawing onto paper.
Artworks like McKnight’s drawing titled; Plume tend to entice
the viewer to observe carefully regardless of the
consequences which may include being taken over by a strange and
mysterious phenomenon.
In
many ways McKnight is presenting a unique kind of visual praxis exploring what
is not known within her local landscape. It is interesting to see how much
Europeans and others don’t know about the Australian bush around their homes.
For example, in two thousand and fourteen
on the ABC’s Fact check site, it revealed that Australia still didn’t know about
seventy five percent of the species that live within the country which is a
large amount of unknown.
Therefore, in some ways whilst
researching McKnight’s artworks on the internet there may well be observed
traces of unknown flora and fauna, so essentially it may well be deducted that
she is aesthetically pathfinding within her local terrain .
When such motifs are bought into life by
McKnight through her drawing praxis there is no doubt, they’re strange because
they may very well be unknown to those who came in the second waves of settlement
or even the first for that matter, humans do not know/can know everything.
tuft
ink, graphite + pencil on 638gsm
saunders waterford watercolour paper
28.5 x 19cm
2018
McKnight’s forensic drawn inquiry
reveals such a vast repertoire of tones, textures, strong and liminal tonalities
and hues from a selection of drawing media, it reminds me of Leonardo da Vinci’s
drawings of plant species in the sense that no one, it appears, has drawn
living and the dead plant and vegetations specimens in the Fremantle terrain as
well. She may well be recording motifs of unique, textures, shapes and tonalites
that could be considered first visual encounters.
Filament 2016
ink, graphite + pencil on 638gsm saunders waterford watercolour paper 57 x 76 cm
More importantly, it seems there is a
good opportunity now that a drawing/biology
course in the field and within primary, secondary and tertiary laboratories
(with microscopes) may well be needed in Western Australia for, at the end of
this decade the state will have had European settlement for two hundred years
and, if one only knows about twenty five percent of what is unique within your
local community in Australia in terms of flora and fauna, then such a policy would
certainly speed up and enhance the understanding
of the environment humans in which live and how they work, how they need to be
protected as McKnight appears to have kick started here within these drawings around
her local community of Fremantle.
All images courtesy
of the artist
Link to ABC
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-07/75-per-cent-of-species-unknown-fact-check/5649858?nw=0
Link to Artist's Website
https://www.liamcknight.com/
