Biography

Lisa Cahill is known internationally for her kiln formed glass sculptures and installations including numerous public art commissions. After graduating from Monash University, Victoria in 2000 she has been an independent studio artist for over 20 years having established glass studios in Melbourne, Sydney and now Canberra. Cahill has been awarded numerous grants, international residencies and has been a regular finalist in the Ranamok, Tom Malone and Hindmarsh Glass Prizes. Exhibiting widely nationally and internationally, her work can be found in Public Collections in Australia, the USA, Denmark and the recently opened Sir John Monash Centre, Australian National Memorial, Villers-Bretonneux, France.

Cahill’s glass installations create a discourse about the Australian landscape and her affinity with it, often entwined with her Danish heritage. Inspired by both the natural world and the transitory nature of the urban experience, Cahill’s dreamlike images invite viewers to draw associations with their own remembered landscapes, resulting in a meditative and emotional response.

Working on a variety of scales and by breaking the works into a series of panels allows Cahill to make work for both internal and external domestic settings as well as large public artworks.

In her exhibition work Cahill uses a variety of techniques including enamelling, etching, engraving, lathe working and carving through both opaque and transparent layers of glass. She is able to manipulate and control light revealing an intensity of colour and evoking notions of an ephemeral landscape.

Having spent many years living and travelling the world, much of this time spent in Denmark, her mother’s homeland, Cahill’s kiln formed glass connects structures of urban architecture, the associations and memories they invoke, and her innate respect for the natural landscape. Rather than a direct reproduction they are more her own interpretation of light and landscape and become a place for quiet contemplation.