Gala artwork 2018: Sarah Anne Johnson

Gala artwork 2018: Sarah Anne JohnsonApocalypse #4 2016 inkjet with holographic tape 15 x 20 courtesy of the artist Apocalypse #4 plays out of scenarios that Johnson enacts on the landscape. As no two sunsets or sunrises are the same, as the light changes, the wind shifts and life moves, it is impossible to take the same photograph of a landscape twice. Yet landscape photography is so often clichdwe feel we have seen the same image a thousand times. Johnsons stylized treatment of the

Apocalypse #4

2016 | inkjet with holographic tape | 15” x 20”| courtesy of the artist

Apocalypse #4 plays out of scenarios that Johnson enacts on the landscape. As no two sunsets or sunrises are the same, as the light changes, the wind shifts and life moves, it is impossible to take the same photograph of a landscape twice. Yet landscape photography is so often clichéd—we feel we have seen the same image a thousand times. Johnson’s stylized treatment of the landscape upends this familiarity. With each application of glitter, colour and shape, she both enhances and disrupts the formulaic images of landscapes.

Johnson is a multidisciplinary artist based in Winnipeg, Canada. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba in 2002 and her MFA in Photography at Yale School of Art in 2004.  Her early work, including Tree Planting (2005) and The Galapagos Project (2007), represents ways of thinking about and performing utopia and the nature of communal experiences. Johnson’s seminal installation House On Fire began her investigation within her grandmother’s trauma as a victim of the CIA’s illegal MK-ULTRA experiments, an ongoing narrative thread within her practice. In 2008, she received the Grange Prize for Contemporary Photography.  Recent exhibitions include Rosy-Fingered Dawn, Division Gallery, Montreal; and Hospital Hallway, Plug In ICA, Winnipeg. She is part of the lauded exhibition Everything is Connected: Art and Conspiracy, currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and preparing for her upcoming Snow Cave at Julie Saul Gallery, New York. She is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto; Julie Saul Gallery, New York; and Division Gallery, Montréal.