Lisa Stonham | Colour Space, 2024/25

Artist Statement

Lisa Stonham is a Visual Artist and MFA student residing on unceded Gadigal Land (Sydney, Australia). Stonham’s multi-disciplinary practice is driven by photography, leading to the creation of two- and three-dimensional works that explore space, light, and time. Her work extends the boundaries of photography into physical space through experimentation with surface, volume, light, and reflection. Working through photo-media into sculpture, video, and installation, she seeks to erase the distinctions between mediums, inviting hybridisations and slippages.

Underpinning these visual investigations is an interest in phenomenology and how the act of seeing engages the body in both perceptual and psychological terms. Situated within the present-moment experience of sensory phenomena, she examines the fluidity of perception and the dynamic interaction between the viewer's physiology and environment.

Through the use of transparent and reflective materials, Stonham creates layered compositions that immerse viewers in the uncertain depths of translucent photographs, generating deliberate ambiguities between the photographic object and its surroundings. The specular acrylic surfaces assert their own presence, capturing and duplicating the present moment in real-time. By considering both planar and volumetric spaces, her works resist a singular, stable viewpoint, inviting multiple perspectives.

This interplay of physical and perceptual effects challenges us to rethink our realities, provoking questions about how we perceive ourselves in physical, architectural, and psychological spaces.

Artist Biography

Lisa Stonham is an interdisciplinary artist who works across photography, sculpture, video and installation, seeking to erase the boundaries between each medium. Exploring the interplay between light, time and space to emphasise the present-moment experience, she investigates how viewers perceive themselves within physical, architectural, and internal psychological spaces.

Recent exhibitions include Everyday Wonder (2024) at Five Walls Project Space, Melbourne; Looking Forward, Looking Through … Future Perfect (2023) at Five Walls Gallery, Melbourne; Conversations with My-Self and Others (2022) at M16 Artspace, Canberra; Perfect Moment … Right Now (2021) at 107 Projects, Sydney.

In 2024, she was awarded The Perth Centre for Photography - Contemporary Landscape in Photography Prize. Stonham has been a finalist in numerous art prizes including the Canberra Contemporary Photography Prize (2024), the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award (2024, 2023, 2022, 2021,2020, 2018, 2016); Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize (2022, 2019); Contemporary Landscape in Photography Award (2022, 2016); Sunshine Coast Art Prize (2020); Hurford Portrait Award (2020); Head-On Mobile Award (2019);  Iris Award (2018); and the KAAF Art Prize (2015). 

Her work has been profiled in The Sydney Morning Herald, reviewed in The Canberra Times, and is held in private collections around Australia.