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August 2026

September 2026

October 2026

November 2026

December 2026

Exhibitions

Wednesday 12 August
2026

Adam Elliot

Making Memoir of a Snail

ACMI
Thursday 8 August – Sunday 1 November

Group Show

The Chelsea Hotel Years 1967–69

Heide Museum of Modern Art
Saturday 28 February – Sunday 16 August

Badra Aji

Get the boy a dog and call it a day

Heide Museum of Modern Art
Saturday 14 March – Sunday 16 August

Group Show

Inside the Mirage

TarraWarra Museum of Art
Saturday 25 July – Sunday 1 November

Lygin Ang

Window Seat

Benalla Art Gallery
Monday 1 June – Monday 31 August

Christopher Pyett

Years of Colour

McClelland Gallery
Saturday 27 June – Sunday 25 October

Grant Nimmo

Spirits of the Green Woods

Daine Singer
Saturday 18 July – Saturday 22 August

Matt Arbuckle

Public Capacity

Daine Singer
Saturday 18 July – Saturday 22 August

Moya McKenna

Picture in a window

Neon Parc
Friday 31 July – Saturday 5 September

Eliza Hutchison

When are the aliens coming?

CAVES Gallery
Saturday 1 August – Saturday 22 August

Lyndell Brown and Charles Green

The Solid Mandala

Arc One Gallery
Wednesday 8 July – Saturday 15 August

Group Show

EMERGENCE[Y]

Melbourne Science Gallery
Saturday 6 June – Saturday 5 December

Group Show

Chogh چوغ

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre
Wednesday 1 July – Saturday 24 October

Heidi Schoenheimer

Around Here

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre
Wednesday 1 July – Saturday 24 October

Group Show

Requiem in Power (RIP)

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre
Wednesday 1 July – Saturday 24 October

Sally Ann McIntyre

Post-extinction huia soundings

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre
Wednesday 1 July – Saturday 24 October

Group Show

Truth Telling Display

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre
Wednesday 5 August – Saturday 19 December

Group Show

Pith and Seed

KINGS Artist-Run
Thursday 23 July – Sunday 16 August

Marie Hagerty

The Human Comedy

Lennox St. Gallery
Wednesday 22 July – Saturday 15 August

Group Show

Winter Selection: Part Two

Lennox St. Gallery
Tuesday 21 July – Saturday 15 August

Warsan Mohammed

To Ourselves

Hillvale Gallery
Saturday 25 July – Sunday 23 August

Kate Beynon

Talismanic: the Robe & Friends

Australian Tapestry Workshop
Thursday 9 July – Saturday 29 August

Desire Moheb Zandi

Songs

Australian Tapestry Workshop
Thursday 23 July – Saturday 3 October

Jackson Farley

The Void View

Australian Tapestry Workshop
Thursday 9 July – Saturday 29 August

Pat Harry

Pat Harry

Niagara Galleries
Wednesday 22 July – Saturday 15 August

Group Show

Other Worlds

Arts Project Australia Studio
Monday 13 July – Friday 25 September

Group Show

Views and Vistas of the Valley

Incinerator Gallery
Saturday 18 July – Saturday 31 October

Aileen Napaljarri Long

Wanakiji

Alcaston Gallery
Wednesday 5 August – Friday 28 August

Group Show

On Iridescence

Void Melbourne
Thursday 30 July – Saturday 22 August

Sonya Lacey

Sleep Metal

Futures Gallery
Saturday 25 July – Saturday 22 August

Naminapu Maymuru-White

They are shining on us

Sullivan+Strumpf
Thursday 23 July – Saturday 22 August

Dr Kirsten Garner Lyttle

After Spectacle: Photography, Authority and the Archive

Blak Dot Gallery
Saturday 1 August – Sunday 23 August

Sonya Lacey

Sleep Metal

Futures Gallery
Saturday 25 July – Saturday 22 August

FUTURES is pleased to present Sleep Metal, a solo exhibition by Sonya Lacey, her first in Naarm and with the gallery.

This body of work draws on a familiar device taken from both screen and print history –a cloud-like form used to imply either a dream sequence or a fight scene– which also obscures the action taking place. With the aid of various media and modalities, including animation and installation, Lacey gently probes the relationship between the metabolic, the technical and the political. At the core of this series is an exploration of the ways in which bodily states of rest and restlessness are often pathologized and governed on a molecular level.

Iron, magnesium, copper and zinc are the so-called 'sleep metals', each of which are said to support sleep and regulate circadian rhythms, promoting rest by quelling restlessness. Cleverly, Lacey has worked with a foundry to create a prototype ‘mattress,’ a piece of sculpture/furniture incorporating cast metals that are bound but not entirely mixed, so that their different colourings are visibly present. If you were to rest upon this object, perhaps infinitesimal doses of copper, iron, magnesium and zinc would trespass your skin and enter your bloodstream. Copper is also present in the etched plates used to create a series of animations, in which particular sequences from televised cartoons are re-drawn, frame by frame so that the exact same cloud form marks both the transition into a dream and the occurrence of a ‘dust-up’ involving two characters jostling for power or survival.

Intriguing and materially rich, the artworks in Sleep Metal encourage a cellular-level awareness of how late-stage capitalism governs subjectivity through biomolecular and media technologies. There is also a challenge to received ideas as Lacey uses animations to propose fighting and dreaming as interchangeable with protesting and visioning – so that they might both act as mechanisms to reorganise reality and its existing power relations. Here sleep is a collective and agential act, a political state where change, once imagined, might become a possibility.

Organised by Victoria Wynne-Jones, the exhibition includes a written conversation with the artist.

Text by Victoria Wynne-Jones

Sonya Lacey (b. 1976, Heretaunga Hastings, Aotearoa New Zealand) is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. She is a current PHD candidate at Monash University in Naarm Melbourne. Through her practice, she has explored architectures of work, rest, and restlessness, and the physiological consequences of abstractions such as time structures and the work environment. She works with media including moving image, sculpture, writing, and print, among others. Often, her studio activities involve dismantling and redeploying a technology in order to physically access the ways by which it becomes psychically or physiologically active.

Lacey completed an MFA through Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine Arts. Recent solo exhibitions include: Eveningness (Whāngarei Art Museum, Whāngarei, 2026); Dust Up, (Robert Heald Gallery, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, 2025) and Totally Dark, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2021. Lacey’s works have been included in group presentations such as: Leap to the Place of Two Pools (Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery, Te Whanganui-aTara Wellington, 2025); The Polyphonic Sea (Bundanon Art Museum, Illaroo, 2023) and Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection (Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2022). Lacey’s exhibition Weekend was nominated for The Walters Prize 2021 and was exhibited at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Her works are included in public and private collections in Aotearoa, New Zealand including Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

Sonya Lacey appears courtesy of Robert Heald Gallery, Wellington, Aoteaora/New Zealand.

Location

Futures Gallery
19 Easey Street, Collingwood VIC 3066, Australia

Date

Saturday 25 July – Saturday 22 August

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Website

https://www.futuresgallery.com.au/exhibitions/sleep-metal

All exhibition content on this website has been sourced from the exhibiting gallery’s website or provided by other art enthusiasts. We do not own or seek to own any of this material. If you are concerned about any misuse of your content, please let us know here.

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Exhibitions

Wednesday 12 August
2026

Adam Elliot

Making Memoir of a Snail

ACMI
Thursday 8 August – Sunday 1 November

Group Show

The Chelsea Hotel Years 1967–69

Heide Museum of Modern Art
Saturday 28 February – Sunday 16 August

Badra Aji

Get the boy a dog and call it a day

Heide Museum of Modern Art
Saturday 14 March – Sunday 16 August

Group Show

Inside the Mirage

TarraWarra Museum of Art
Saturday 25 July – Sunday 1 November

Lygin Ang

Window Seat

Benalla Art Gallery
Monday 1 June – Monday 31 August

Christopher Pyett

Years of Colour

McClelland Gallery
Saturday 27 June – Sunday 25 October

Grant Nimmo

Spirits of the Green Woods

Daine Singer
Saturday 18 July – Saturday 22 August

Matt Arbuckle

Public Capacity

Daine Singer
Saturday 18 July – Saturday 22 August

Moya McKenna

Picture in a window

Neon Parc
Friday 31 July – Saturday 5 September

Eliza Hutchison

When are the aliens coming?

CAVES Gallery
Saturday 1 August – Saturday 22 August

Lyndell Brown and Charles Green

The Solid Mandala

Arc One Gallery
Wednesday 8 July – Saturday 15 August

Group Show

EMERGENCE[Y]

Melbourne Science Gallery
Saturday 6 June – Saturday 5 December

Group Show

Chogh چوغ

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre
Wednesday 1 July – Saturday 24 October

Heidi Schoenheimer

Around Here

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre
Wednesday 1 July – Saturday 24 October

Group Show

Requiem in Power (RIP)

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre
Wednesday 1 July – Saturday 24 October

Sally Ann McIntyre

Post-extinction huia soundings

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre
Wednesday 1 July – Saturday 24 October

Group Show

Truth Telling Display

Bundoora Homestead Art Centre
Wednesday 5 August – Saturday 19 December

Group Show

Pith and Seed

KINGS Artist-Run
Thursday 23 July – Sunday 16 August

Marie Hagerty

The Human Comedy

Lennox St. Gallery
Wednesday 22 July – Saturday 15 August

Group Show

Winter Selection: Part Two

Lennox St. Gallery
Tuesday 21 July – Saturday 15 August

Warsan Mohammed

To Ourselves

Hillvale Gallery
Saturday 25 July – Sunday 23 August

Kate Beynon

Talismanic: the Robe & Friends

Australian Tapestry Workshop
Thursday 9 July – Saturday 29 August

Desire Moheb Zandi

Songs

Australian Tapestry Workshop
Thursday 23 July – Saturday 3 October

Jackson Farley

The Void View

Australian Tapestry Workshop
Thursday 9 July – Saturday 29 August

Pat Harry

Pat Harry

Niagara Galleries
Wednesday 22 July – Saturday 15 August

Group Show

Other Worlds

Arts Project Australia Studio
Monday 13 July – Friday 25 September

Group Show

Views and Vistas of the Valley

Incinerator Gallery
Saturday 18 July – Saturday 31 October

Aileen Napaljarri Long

Wanakiji

Alcaston Gallery
Wednesday 5 August – Friday 28 August

Group Show

On Iridescence

Void Melbourne
Thursday 30 July – Saturday 22 August

Sonya Lacey

Sleep Metal

Futures Gallery
Saturday 25 July – Saturday 22 August

Naminapu Maymuru-White

They are shining on us

Sullivan+Strumpf
Thursday 23 July – Saturday 22 August

Dr Kirsten Garner Lyttle

After Spectacle: Photography, Authority and the Archive

Blak Dot Gallery
Saturday 1 August – Sunday 23 August

Sonya Lacey

Sleep Metal

Futures Gallery
Saturday 25 July – Saturday 22 August

FUTURES is pleased to present Sleep Metal, a solo exhibition by Sonya Lacey, her first in Naarm and with the gallery.

This body of work draws on a familiar device taken from both screen and print history –a cloud-like form used to imply either a dream sequence or a fight scene– which also obscures the action taking place. With the aid of various media and modalities, including animation and installation, Lacey gently probes the relationship between the metabolic, the technical and the political. At the core of this series is an exploration of the ways in which bodily states of rest and restlessness are often pathologized and governed on a molecular level.

Iron, magnesium, copper and zinc are the so-called 'sleep metals', each of which are said to support sleep and regulate circadian rhythms, promoting rest by quelling restlessness. Cleverly, Lacey has worked with a foundry to create a prototype ‘mattress,’ a piece of sculpture/furniture incorporating cast metals that are bound but not entirely mixed, so that their different colourings are visibly present. If you were to rest upon this object, perhaps infinitesimal doses of copper, iron, magnesium and zinc would trespass your skin and enter your bloodstream. Copper is also present in the etched plates used to create a series of animations, in which particular sequences from televised cartoons are re-drawn, frame by frame so that the exact same cloud form marks both the transition into a dream and the occurrence of a ‘dust-up’ involving two characters jostling for power or survival.

Intriguing and materially rich, the artworks in Sleep Metal encourage a cellular-level awareness of how late-stage capitalism governs subjectivity through biomolecular and media technologies. There is also a challenge to received ideas as Lacey uses animations to propose fighting and dreaming as interchangeable with protesting and visioning – so that they might both act as mechanisms to reorganise reality and its existing power relations. Here sleep is a collective and agential act, a political state where change, once imagined, might become a possibility.

Organised by Victoria Wynne-Jones, the exhibition includes a written conversation with the artist.

Text by Victoria Wynne-Jones

Sonya Lacey (b. 1976, Heretaunga Hastings, Aotearoa New Zealand) is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. She is a current PHD candidate at Monash University in Naarm Melbourne. Through her practice, she has explored architectures of work, rest, and restlessness, and the physiological consequences of abstractions such as time structures and the work environment. She works with media including moving image, sculpture, writing, and print, among others. Often, her studio activities involve dismantling and redeploying a technology in order to physically access the ways by which it becomes psychically or physiologically active.

Lacey completed an MFA through Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine Arts. Recent solo exhibitions include: Eveningness (Whāngarei Art Museum, Whāngarei, 2026); Dust Up, (Robert Heald Gallery, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, 2025) and Totally Dark, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, 2021. Lacey’s works have been included in group presentations such as: Leap to the Place of Two Pools (Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery, Te Whanganui-aTara Wellington, 2025); The Polyphonic Sea (Bundanon Art Museum, Illaroo, 2023) and Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection (Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2022). Lacey’s exhibition Weekend was nominated for The Walters Prize 2021 and was exhibited at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Her works are included in public and private collections in Aotearoa, New Zealand including Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.

Sonya Lacey appears courtesy of Robert Heald Gallery, Wellington, Aoteaora/New Zealand.

Location

Futures Gallery
19 Easey Street, Collingwood VIC 3066, Australia

Date

Saturday 25 July – Saturday 22 August

Save to Calendar

Google

Website

https://www.futuresgallery.com.au/exhibitions/sleep-metal

All exhibition content on this website has been sourced from the exhibiting gallery’s website or provided by other art enthusiasts. We do not own or seek to own any of this material. If you are concerned about any misuse of your content, please let us know here.

Suggest a change

Suggest an edit or change to this exhibition

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