Artist Interview: Conversation with Lisa Stonham

Lisa Stonham is a visual artist based on unceded Gadigal Country in Sydney, whose multidisciplinary practice reinterprets photography as a sculptural, spatial and temporal medium. She works with transparent and mixed archival photo media mounted on acrylic to create free standing photo sculptures that respond to light and architectural space.

Stonham’s installation is presented in relation to existing MAMA architecture and glass windows, employing light as a material collaborator. Her sculptural and site-specific works challenge the photograph as a fixed image and instead produce elastic and bodily experiences in which the audience becomes a temporary component of the work. Stonham’s practice explores how photographic objects shift through movement and spatial encounter.

This interview between Lisa Stonham and Pinky Wittingslow, MAMA Studio Coordinator, occurred in July 2026.

You’ve said that your work challenges the idea of photography as a ‘fixed record of the past’. Has this idea always driven your work or was it something that has evolved with the development of your practice?

I have always been interested in the idea of temporal dislocations or anachronisms— moments when the flow of time is suspended, unsettled or rearranged. For me photography offers the potential to disrupt time - bringing the past into the future - when the moment of capture meets the moment of viewing.

I became interested in expanding this idea, asking whether the photograph could be understood as an experiential, time-fluid medium rather than simply a static record of what has been.

My MFA (2025) allowed me to undertake sustained research into time from both philosophical and photographic perspectives. Through that research and extensive studio experimentation, I explored photography's capacity to suspend and intensify time, seeking ways to invite the viewer into moments that stretch, fold, and linger.

This led me to reconsider the photograph not as a fixed image, but as an active structure through which spatial, temporal, and perceptual experiences unfold.

Bright, bold colours feature in your works. Can you share a bit of your approach to colour and where the imagery in your work comes from?

The imagery in my work originates from tracing sunlight's daily and seasonal movement through interior architectural spaces. I photograph light as it projects through windows and skylights to capture reflections, shadows, and subtle light shifts. Observation is the foundation of the work.

Sometimes the colour is photographed directly by capturing light within coloured interiors. I also use blackout blinds to create narrow apertures, photographing light leaks on white walls in a process that echoes the camera obscura. An image of the outside world is projected onto the interior wall, but without a lens, it’s significantly distorted into abstract colour.

Colour is never fixed. It changes with light, perception, and display context, so the work continues to evolve after it leaves the studio. In the gallery, the sun projects light through transparent photo-media installed on the windows. These projections create a transient copy of the “photographed” image, questioning its stability and permanence. The colour is unstable, an evolving experience rather than a fixed property of the photograph.

Working with light is so critical to photography and an essential element in experiencing your work. What are the challenges in selecting the right transparent mediums and supports for your work?

Light is my primary subject and material, but I also consider it a co-collaborator and structuring force. I explore how light's materiality can activate objects and spaces, repositioning photography as a physically immersive and spatial medium.

My process involves building relationships with suppliers and manufacturers who have specialised material expertise. Transparent acrylic, mirror, and optical films each absorb, transmit, reflect, and refract light differently, so I spend a great deal of time testing how they behave under changing conditions. My studio experiments layer materials that absorb, reflect, and transmit light to engage a sense of liveness in the work.

The greatest challenge is not so much in the materials as in the collaboration with sunlight, where the work is affected by an unstable source that varies with time of day and shifts in weather conditions. Colour, light, and shadow bounce through space, destabilising objects and images, producing uncertain encounters in which artworks merge with their surrounding environments. That unpredictability is part of the work.

Lisa Stonham is a finalist of the 2026 National Photography Prize, presented by the MAMA Art Foundation.

On until 22 November 2026

Photography by Jeremy Weihrauch