(2022 - Ongoing)

‘Cruising for a Bruising’ is a long-form, ongoing project that serves as a Camp love letter to the Australian Suburbs. Growing up queer in outer-metropolitan Naarm (Melbourne), Knight found the surrounding suburban landscape felt alienating and suffocating due to homophobia. ‘Cruising for a Bruising’ sees Knight address these past memories of estrangement. Drawing inspiration from and building on queer studies and Camp aesthetics, Knight posits that humdrum suburbia can be transformed with a Camp vision. Camp is the love of failure, and sees value in the banal, it’s a personal and political worldview. Suburbia is just like Camp: good because it’s awful, endearing because it’s tacky, loveable because it’s so helpless. Knight searches for moments that capture the essence of uniquely Australian suburbia – milk bars, fish and chip shops, strip malls and signage, which under his gaze transform into Camp spectacles. The resulting works celebrate suburbia’s unique and, at times, contradictory nature, at once surreal and mundane, humorous and humdrum. Presently, with his fiancé, Knight now finds humour and delight through a queer Camp vision that reveals a playful, joyous, and charming side of suburban Australia. Following his documentation of the Northern suburbs where Knight grew up, the series continues with Knight’s exploration and serialising of the Western suburbs of Naarm.

Knight’s debut photobook can be purchased through M.33 and Perimeter online.