Johanna Bolton
Contact: johanna [at] johannabolton.com
Education
2011-2014 BA Fine Arts, Chelsea College of Art
2015-present Member of Alt-MFA
Relevant Work Experience
2014-2016 Visiting Tutor at Royal College of Art, Information Experience Design
Group Exhibitions, Residencies and Events
2018
David Bomberg Collection, Commission and Residency, London South Bank University (April- October 2018)
2017
Kew Herbarium Residency (November 2017- February 2018)
‘Unknown Futures’ (AltMFA), Guest Projects, London
‘Emergency 2017’, Word of Warning, Manchester
‘Pre-sliced Orange Segments’, Light Eye Mind Gallery, London
‘Word Play’, Forest Gate Arts, London
eYEbAll presents ‘Position 2’, Project Space Wapping, London
‘Solutions’, Rotherhithe Beach Party, Art Licks Weekend
2016
The Observer Effect, Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art
The Other (RCA Feminist Society), Darwin Galleries, Royal College of Art
Circumbendibus (AltMFA), Guest Projects, London
PREFAB-Lab, Bath Fringe Arts Festival, Bath
eYEbAll presents ‘Position 1′, Project Space Wapping, London
‘I TWANG’ performance at the Royal Academy, Burlington Gardens Festival
Elastic. Performative Art Research at the Nunnery Gallery, London
Multi-function, online exhibition (AltMFA) GalleryELL, New York
‘States of Flux’ (AltMFA), Art Licks Weekend
‘Drawing Utopias,’ IKLECTIK Art Lab, London
2015
Off the shelf, IKLECTIK Art Lab, London
The Motion of Matter, The Rum Factory Project Space, London
2014
Chelsea College Degree Show
ING Discerning Eye, invited by Chris Ingram and Jo Baring (curator)
2013
‘Lactose 2’ image used to promote ‘Acrobat’ Short Film by Eduardo Menz, supported by Canada Arts Council
For Every Action there is an Equal and Opposite Reaction, Westminster Reference Library
Editions, Chelsea College Art Library
Joyless Unity, Mori + Stein Gallery, Camberwell, London
2012
Event and publication at TATE Britain; ‘What I talk about when I talk about my thoughts’
Entwined, student group exhibition at Chelsea College, London
2011
Gerlesborgs Vårutställning, Stockholm, Sweden
CLASHANDCONVERGEII, Camberwell Space, London
Publications
‘What I talk about when I talk about my thoughts’, Group Publication and Event at TATE Britain 2012
‘The Study of Elastic Bands in R3 Euclidean Space’, Artist’s book (edition of 50), 2014
‘Circle or Oval?: Concepts, Non-identity and the Lifeworld’, Symposium: Material Others and Other Materialities, Informed Matters, IKLECTIK Labs 2016
Grants & Scholarships
Shortlisted for the Mead Scholarship 2013
Shortlisted for the ACME studio award 2014
Art works held in UAL Collection, and private collections
Artist Statement
I want to bounce my ideas against matter, against the human body – the resistance they meet there teach me something new every time. I am interested in how concepts and language affects human understanding of the real life-world out there – and in here. The human body is perhaps the first case of matter that has become self-aware.
I make and collect open series of objects going through change. They follow a system, sometimes rational and sometimes intuitive, but the series have no natural end – their start, end and the rules that govern their path is as personal and haphazard as any aesthetic or artistic choice may be. Artists like Mel Bochner and Sol LeWitt investigated systems, but set the rules so that the end point is given – I am interested in the awkwardness of systems where the end point remains elusive (e.g. the work of Hanne Darboven or Mary Kelly).
I work in many materials; clay, plaster, wood and plastics. The objects tend to be sculptural, human scale and tactile. Arranging the collected series becomes an investigation into the creation of meaning and narratives.
I spend a long time looking at the same object, hoping that by changing viewpoint, I will eventually discover something new. This new, ‘other,’ that I am hoping to catch, is maybe something akin to Adorno’s Nonidentity – the part of any object that eludes capture by the concept. I want to expose those parts of an object that cannot be communicated via language, to take something familiar and create something of universal strangeness.