ELIZABETH PRESA( PhD, M.A, B.A Hons) lives and works in Melbourne where she is the Head of the Centre for ideas at the Victorian College of the Arts
Elizabeth Presa's research focuses on the poetics of the text. She is a sculptor and installation artist who has exhibited in Australia, Asia and the United States. In 2002 she was artist-in-residence at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore, and the recipient of the Power Institute Scholarship for a six-month residency at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. In 2004 Éditions Galilée, Paris, presented an exhibition of her work made in response to Chaque Fois Unique (The Work of Mourning) by Jacques Derrida, which was later exhibited at the Musee de Livres D' Artistes Contemporains.
In 2005 she undertook research in Paris on Maurice Blanchot's evocation of L'Inconnue de la Seine which culminated in an installation Moon Water, MARS Gallery, Melbourne. The catalogue for this exhibition contains critical essays by Jean-Luc Nancy and Andrew Benjamin. Her research on the interconnections between Rodin, Rilke and Blanchot is published in After Blanchot: Literature, Criticism and Philosophy (University of Delaware, 2006).
This year the Association Française d'Action Artistique (AFAA) has awarded her a three month residency to develop video installations based on works in the collection of the Louvre Museum. The first of these The Smile of Madam Houdonì is a collaboration with Jean-Luc Nancy. In September she will present new work 'The Calculation of the Rainbow' based on treatise falsely attributed to Spinoza. Elizabeth Presa's work is featured in Verwisch Die Spuren (Diaphanes) by the philosopher Alexander Garcia Düttmann.