About Lea Kannar-Lichtenberger
Lea Kannar-Lichtenberger is an environmental artist exploring the connections surrounding human impact on islands and isolated environments. Examining through immersive residencies as artist/tourist, traveller, observer, Lea looks beyond the travel guide rhetoric to create artworks and installations examining the impact of the Anthropocene and consumerism on the Utopian destination.
She completed a Master of Fine Art (2016) and a Master of Contemporary Art (2014) degrees at Sydney College of the Arts – University of Sydney Australia.
Lea’s investigations and onsite research to date including the Galapagos Islands (Ecuador), Faroe Islands (the North Sea), Lord Howe Island (NSW Australia), Venice (Italy) & Deception Island (Antarctica). Her interdisciplinary eco-critical vision that embraces various mediums from the traditional such as printmedia, photography and drawing, to new media of video, sound and installations she works to create a discourse about the research and resulting artworks at exhibitions and conferences internationally and in Australia.
In Disseminating her artistic vision, Kannar-Lichtenberger has exhibited as an ‘artist at large’ in two recent Solo exhibitions at Spectrum Project space, Edith Cowan University Western Australia, and in the QCA Project Gallery at Griffith University Queensland. Her exhibitions internationally and include Venice Summer Academy, Stunning Edge Exhibition Taiwan, the New York Hall of Science, Galway International Arts Festival Ireland, the SVA (School of Visual Arts) residency alumni show at the Flatiron Building in Manhattan and at the NYABF at the MOMA annex PS1, New York. She has exhibited extensively in group exhibitions around Australian including Sculpture by the Sea (Sydney and Cottesloe), Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing and the Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize.
Lea Kannar-Lichtenberger’s research and resulting artworks have been published in peer reviewed journals and a book, she has been invited to deliver formal lectures and over 23 papers at conferences around the globe. In 2021 she was invited to speak at the Royal Society of NSW in a talk titled: ‘Antarctica: This Ain’t No Mirage – the value of art in disseminating scientific information’.
2022 SWELL ARTWORK – Septem Oceanus Despoiled, Lea Kannar-Lichtenberger
This work explores the questions surrounding microplastics in the environment and references the unique coral Favia speciosa of Lord Howe Island.
These 7 ceramics signify the number of seas on our world; 7 is seen as the number between life and death, the seeker, the thinker. 7 ceramics sit as a declaration that there should be no compromise in the human responsibility to care for all species, seas and lands on this planet. We sit upon a precipice of time; a point which will never come again where we can all make a difference.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leakannarlichtenberger
Website: https://www.leakannar.com
Come and see for yourself at SWELL Sculpture Festival, Pacific Parade, Currumbin 9-18 September.