SELECTED WORKS
PRACTICE
Sabine Lacey's work explores the relationship between painting and photography, examining their interplay and convergence.
She utilizes photos from family albums, both from her own and found, to investigate perceptions surrounding these snapshots, delving into themes of appearances, memory, identity, and those undercurrents that sneak into today's reality. Lacey's recent work expands on this concept by examining how photography can evolve beyond just capturing a straightforward record and instead embrace the multilayered, transcendent qualities of painting. Both her photographs and her current painting practice move away from figurative representation, focusing instead on the search for presence within absence and, in photography, a quest for form emerging from light.
ARCHIVES
Series
Research on ‘Organic Matter’
Date Range
2023 - ...
Medium
Digital photography
Description
Rather than merely serving as a documentary medium that captures and represents reality, Lacey's approach to photography advocates for photography capable of transcending surface appearances and carrying a deeper emotional and conceptual message. The resulting images challenge viewers to engage in a meditative experience, contemplating the interplay between presence and absence, as well as the notions of ambiguity and transformation.
Series
Organic Matter
Date Range
2023 - ...
Medium
Works in mixed media on paper, boards and canvas.
Description
This series of small works, parallel to the research on "Hartnäckiges Geflüster," investigates image-making through the manipulation of light and the investigation of forms that materialize through the layering of glazes and various media. It engages with the concept of nothingness to reveal the emergence of 'some thing,' inviting contemplation of absence and presence in the creative process.
Series
PEARS, PLUMS AND POPPIES
Date Range
2021
Medium
Egg tempera on gesso board
Description
This series of small works represents a dialogue between historical practices and contemporary painting. Pears, plums, and poppy seeds gathered from the monks’ garden in Glenstall Abbey, where I was attending a residency, served as an anchor for this series of small studies to explore form and its deconstruction, and colour and how to create depth and vibrancy through layering, drawing upon the old masters’ technique of egg tempera.
Series
ON THE NATURE OF INTERSTICES
Date Range
2017 - 2023
Medium
oil paintings on canvas
Description
Narratives from the past, captured in found photographs, get entwined with threads from the present, revealing how the past and past generations linger in the lacunas and interstices of the now. These paintings search for a visual language that evokes and tells perpetual stories able to transcend the boundaries of the moment documented in the photograph. Like Paul Celan said “All the faces’ writing, into which whirring wordsand drilled-Mini-eternal syllables.”
Series
UNSPOKEN
Date Range
2012 - 2017
Medium
oil paintings on board and canvas
Description
In delving into the intricate tapestry of family ties, this series of paintings reveals the unspoken hidden beneath the surface of photographs from a family album. By transforming the frozen moments printed onto these snapshots into a nuanced interplay of perception, the works deconstruct the fabric of memory with its inherent complexities and external narratives. They become an invitation to explore the emotional landscapes and interplays of family dynamics, both revealed and hidden.
Series
KILLALA BAY
Date Range
2012 - 2013
Medium
Oil and acrylics on gesso board
Description