Sonya Lacey (born December 1976) is a New Zealand artist based in

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...

. She works with a range of mediums including performance, video and installation. Her works are in the collection of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

Early life

Lacey was born in 1976 in

Hastings Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...

, New Zealand.

Education

Lacey graduated from the

Elam School of Fine Arts The Elam School of Fine Arts, founded by John Edward Elam, is part of the Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries at the University of Auckland. Students study degrees in fine art with an emphasis on a multidisciplinary approach. The schoo ...

in Auckland with a MFA in 2007.

Career

Lacey's artistic works demonstrate an interest in forms of communication. Her work has been curated into programmes at institutions including the Singapore Centre for Contemporary Art, the

London International Film Festival The BFI London Film Festival is an annual film festival founded in 1957 and held in the United Kingdom, running for two weeks in October with co-operation from the British Film Institute. It screens more than 300 films, documentaries and shor ...

, and the Govett Brewster Art Gallery. Together with Sarah Rose, Lacey established the collaborative research project ''lightreading''. Notable solo exhibitions: * ''Making things clear'' at

The Physics Room The Physics Room is a non-commercial contemporary art gallery in Christchurch Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South I ...

Christchurch Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon Rive ...

, 2010. * ''Dilutions and Infinitesimals'' at The Physics Room, Christchurch, 2016. For this show, Lacey produced works using an original typeface, alongside a video installation, with an imagined narrative drawing the two parts of the exhibition together. * ''Dilutions: Three short films by Sonya Lacey'' at the Centre for Contemporary Arts,

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

, 2016. This exhibition presented three of Lacey's short films – ''Infinitesimals'' (2016), ''By Sea'' (2015), and ''Newspaper for Vignelli'' (2010). * ''Smooth but coarser than yellow'' at Robert Heald Gallery, Wellington, 2017. * ''Speed Reading'' at NTU CCA, Singapore, 2017. * ''Newspaper for Vignelli'' at

Dunedin Public Art Gallery The Dunedin Public Art Gallery holds the main public art collection of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. Located in The Octagon in the heart of the city, it is close to the city's public library, Dunedin Town Hall, and other facilities such as ...

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

, 2019. This exhibition reflected Lacey's interest in different printing histories across time, and looked to the work of Italian designer

Massimo Vignelli Massimo Vignelli (; January 10, 1931 – May 27, 2014) was an Italian designer who worked in a number of areas including packaging, houseware, furniture, public signage, and showroom design. He was the co-founder of Vignelli Associates, with his ...

and his proposed redesign of ''The European Journal'' (c.1978) for inspiration.

Awards and residencies

* Awarded residency at the

Banff Centre Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, formerly known as The Banff Centre (and previously The Banff Centre for Continuing Education), located in Banff, Alberta, was established in 1933 as the Banff School of Drama. It was granted full autonomy as ...

, Canada in 2012. * Awarded residency at the Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore in 2017. During this residency, Lacey developed a project titled ''One divides into two'', which derives its title from a

Maoist Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of Ch ...

slogan from the 1960s. This project expanded Lacey's investigations into non-western print histories.

References

1976 births Living people New Zealand women artists People from Hastings, New Zealand {{NewZealand-artist-stub