Grant Lingard was born in Māwhera Greymouth on the West Coast of Te Waipounamu; he grew up there and in the small nearby towns of Blackball and Dobson. Grant moved to Ōtautahi Christchurch in 1981 to attend the School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury, graduating with a Diploma in Fine Arts in 1984. He held his first solo exhibition the following year at the James Paul Gallery, and exhibited regularly in Ōtautahi afterwards in project spaces, dealer galleries and public galleries.

In 1986, he was awarded the CSA Guthrey Travel Award, and the following year he travelled to Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. He moved to Sydney in late 1988 and continued to exhibit there and in Aotearoa New Zealand. After becoming HIV-positive, he lived with the condition for several years before dying from a related illness on 10 November 1995. Three years later, the Grant Lingard Scholarship at the Ilam School of Fine Arts was established by the estate of Peter Lanini, Grant’s partner.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )