Sonya Lacey’s Newspaper for Vignelli depicts a series of tracking shots which tail the pages of a newspaper as they continually tumble just-out-of-reach within a gusty outdoor setting. This video, which is transferred from 16mm film, was acquired for the Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection in 2012 as part of its new media collection initiative.

The newspaper depicted is not any-old daily tabloid. Lacey has carefully constructed a facsimile based on the European Journal (1978), a proposed-but-never-published newspaper designed by the well-known modernist graphic designer Massimo Vignelli (1931-2014). While only Vignelli’s mockup of his cover has survived, Lacey has imagined the journal’s complete contents, recreating Vignelli’s signature gridded blocks, uniformly scaled titles and bold sans-serif headers. Casting this design into a turbulent environment is her meditation on aesthetic hope, a consideration of the fate of ‘good’ design in a world of commercial imperatives.

This exhibition was staged concurrently with Sherrie Levine: African Masks After Walker Evans, Walker Evans: The Magazine Work, and Patrick Pound: Documentary Intersect.