Australian visual artist, academic
Elizabeth Presa (born 1956) is an Australian visual artist and academic based in Melbourne. 
Working with sculpture her work uses a range of materials and processes, including sericulture, apiculture and casting. Some of her installations use plaster as a forensic tool to examine traces of the psyche, biological life and the environment. She is an academic, an author and has also worked as a curator and gallery director.
Presa is the mother of Australian contemporary artist Anastasia Klose with whom she occasionally collaborates.
Academic career.
Presa studied at the Victorian College of the Arts of the University of Melbourne, graduating with a Diploma of Sculpture in 1977. She studied at the Phillip Institute, Post Graduate Sculpture, 1980, University of Melbourne; 1978, 83–85. She has a Masters in Critical Theory and Comparative Literature and a PhD in Critical Theory and Comparative Literature both undertaken at Monash University.
She tutored in art philosophy at Riverina College of Advanced Education during 1980–81, and as part of the Sculpture department of the Melbourne Centre for Adult Education from 1984 to 1985, and following this in the Sculpture department of the Victoria College Prahran.
From 1993 she taught in the School of Art at the Victorian College of the Arts, in 2003 she was appointed Head of the interdisciplinary Victorian College of the Arts Centre for Ideas, where she focussed on interdisciplinary curriculum and research design in the visual and performing arts. Additionally, she has been a visiting artist and guest lecturer at a number of international universities and has undertaken multiple international artist residencies. A notable fellowship Presa undertook was entitled "Interior Castle: St Teresa of Avila, architectures of space", at the Five College's Women's Research Centre, Mt Holyoke, Massachusetts.
Curation.
Presa was Director of Wagga Wagga Regional Gallery in 1978–79.
Her work as curator has involved three iterations of 'Do It' with Hans Ulrich Obrist, including a project with the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing.
Her work on a series of beehive projects titled ‘"Apian Utopias: Small Architecture for Bees"’ involves projects and exhibitions in Tokyo, the US, Beijing, New Zealand and Australia. Her ongoing interest is in the interrelationship between philosophy and art.
Selected exhibitions.
Selected shows include