Born 1976, Winnipeg. Lives and works in Winnipeg.
What concept of paradise can survive the early twenty-first century? The last few hundred years is a visual inventory of paradise dreamscapes, far-ranging forms of distant idyllic retreats both above and below ground. The visual evidence forms a compendium for the making of classical art history, legitimizing colonialism and veiling the process of exploiting natural resources.
Johnson's 2003 series of photographs of tree planters in northern Manitoba depict an alternate, physically strained paradise but one occupied by youthful, seemingly idealistic planters who seem intent on restoring what has been clear cut by timber companies. Another photographic series focuses on a group of liberal minded uppermiddle class young women on an eco farm in the Galapagos. Johnson also produced a scale model Galapagos jungle house with claymation inhabitants, portraits of the women she encountered in two trips during 2005-06. The activist ecologists are represented amidst a fragile natural landscape with tensions between the young cohabitants as palpable as the eroding beauty of the islands.
For Crack the Sky, Johnson presents a new series of sculptures in the form of intimate dioramas that bridge her earlier interests in representing a socially complex paradise —controlled, artificial and increasingly recognizable.
www.bulgergallery.com
www.saulgallery.com