emma johnson
works
|
SPIRIT 5th May 2009 290644 040509 This is what remains, and it is the last in the series, "Hypertensinon", "FLIP (release)" and "Spirit" |
|
POINTS OF REFERENCE Landguard Fort, Felixstowe April 2009 This exhibition looks at the creative aspects of recycling, deconstructing and re-building found reference materials (books, maps, etc) into artworks. Using objects, images, and text to explore recurring themes such as the fragmented nature of memory, time and history. Found objects are reconstructed into artworks which often have a defined structural or 'architectural' form relating to the space they inhabit, but also standing as a tangible and symbolic presence of the information contained within (books, maps, letters, etc). The exhibition brings together a series of installations and sculptures dealing with issues of deconstruction and transformation and the ambiguity of communication, and also includes an ongoing series of work dealing with maps, their imagery and concepts. A series of maps and atlases have been painstakingly 'dissected' by the artist, revealing a radically altered visual and physical structure. Artform: Installation Sub-category: Assemblage |
|
LOGO 2009 Installation at Landguard Fort, Felixstowe recycled
newspaper Landguard Fort Logo built from recycled newspaper bricks.
|
|
DISLOCATION 2009 Maps Maps deconstructed to give a distorted picture, misleading information, heighten confusion, and give a false sense of security. |
|
DISLOCATION (detail) 2009 Maps Maps deconstructed to give a distorted picture, misleading information, heighten confusion, and give a false sense of security. |
|
Dislocation: Landguard 2009 Maps
& charts Images from the residency at Landguard Fort, April 2009.
|
|
Dislocation: Landguard 2009 Maps
& charts Images from the residency at Landguard Fort, April 2009.
|
|
Asssimilation 2008 Landguard Fort, Felixstowe Installation Recycled
newspaper A small scale site-specific installation / 'intervention' within the structure of Landguard Fort. Using bricks made entirely from recycled newspapers to create a structure which on the surface appears sympathetic to the look and feel of the original architecture, but which is in fact useless, or 'surplus to requirements'. |
|
FLIP (release) 2008 Installation newspapers 'FLIP (release)' is the second piece in this series of large towers / heaps of paper. |
|
STACK (Hypertension) 2007 Installation newspapers 'STACK (Hypertension)' is the first in the series of large towers / heaps of newspaper: observing the ways people close to me collect & hoard objects.
|
|
Stack 2007 Installation Newspaper
|
|
Pleat 2007 Folded Paperback book
|
|
Tower 2007 Used
postcards 30cm x 8cm x 8cm
|
|
Descent 2006 Video
Projection (click on image to play short clip)
Filmed
on location in Russia. |
|
Remembering 2006 Folded Book A Single book in a continuing series of folded bookworks - looking at the changing sculptural physicality of a book when it is read - having pages folded down at the corners, and markers placed within the pages to remind us. Also dealing with issues of deconstruction and transformation, the recycling of materials, and the ambiguity of text - as well as the obsessive repetitive actions used in the making of the work. |
|
Relativity (Brave New World) - detail Installation TARDIS international (Videoart, Installation & Performance), Argyle Street Annexe, Suffolk College, Ipswich July 2006 This floor-based installation is about human reproduction, inherited traits, and genetic engineering. A dressmaker's pattern for a human body overlaid on computer generated "skin". Influenced by the fact that I am the "product" of a dressmaker and a geneticist, this installation was made in collaboration with my mother, Ann Johnson.
|
|
Relativity (Brave New World) - detail Installation TARDIS international (Videoart, Installation & Performance), Argyle Street Annexe, Suffolk College, Ipswich July 2006 |
|
Dislocation Mixed-media Installation Asylum Studios October 2005 Road maps are reconstructed into artworks which stand as a tangible and symbolic presence of the information contained within, but have been rendered unreadable - symbolising a recurring theme of coded and fragmented information.
|
|
Home Installation Open 2 Art Ipswich May 2005 Made out of recycled clothing, this installation symbolises the assistance provided by The Salvation Army to some of the most vulnerable members of our society. The Salvation Army has a very strong recycling ethic - very little is wasted, and so after the exhibition closed, the house was dismantled, and all the clothing re-introduced into the recycling system.
|
|
Volume Installation "VIP1", A Weekend of Video, Installation & Performance Butley Mills Studios, Suffolk July 2004
|
|
Against The Grain Installation Fore Front Gallery, Ipswich November 2003 A floor-based installation made out of large quantities of folded paperback books (200+) - dealing with issues of deconstruction and transformation, the recycling of materials, and the ambiguity of text - as well as the obsessive repetitive actions used in the making of the work.
|
|
Between The Lines Installation "Segue", A Festival of Installation Art St. Mary at the Quay May 2003
|
|
Enigma Installation Forefront Gallery, Ipswich December 2002 Working with the idea of coded communication and a visual suggestion of Morse Code. Photographs of all of the cellphone masts in East Anglia were cut into two inch squares, and re-assembled in the wrong order: fragmenting the network, and representing it as a broken sequence around the walls of the gallery.This is a visual manefestation of a method of communication which was designed to be aural, not visual. Disconnected: lines of communication broken.
|
|
Double Exposure Installation "Drawn Together", Bury St. Edmunds Art Gallery. The Market Cross, Bury St. Edmunds. Sept-Oct 2002 Based on architectural imagery taken from the Market Cross Gallery, this piece is made up of two images - one from the inside of the large window at the end of te gallery, and the other from the same window, but from the outside of the building. Whilst the image is placed in the gallery floor as a "reflection" of the window, the external image contradicts that possibility. This contradiction is emphasised by the fragmentation and distortion of the double exposure, the perspective, and the tiled grid format of the image on paper. Two weeks into the exhibition, the central secton of the installation was removed, and replaced with a negative version of the image, adding a further dimension to the concept of double exposure.
|
|
Relativity Installation Fore Front Gallery, Ipswich November 2001 400 buttons: systematically sorted, numbered, labelled, catalogued, sealed in poly-bags and displayed in order of colour, thickness, diameter, number of holes, and material.
|
|
|
|
Fragments Installation Kharkov City Art Gallery, Kharkov, Ukraine. July 2002 Three large scale, fragmented images of the back of the artist's head in three different stages of disintegration, from greyscale to pure black & white. As part of the human body, the head is completely out of scale within it's architectural context, and its positioning on the floor and fragmented nature adds to this ambiguity. A piece about alienation, contradiction, image and identity - my hair is my identity, yet you cannot see my face. (This is almost the complete opposite of "Surfacing", in which I am emerging from beneath the floor plane).
|
|
Cause & Effect Installation The Ancient House Gallery, Ipswich February 2001 "Cause & Effect" is about the relationship between action and consequence. Every action we take has a direct outcome, and indirect repercussions, whether they be good or bad; within our control, or out of it. Perhaps this piece is about guilt, accountability, and loss of control - how far can it be said that we are to blame if a chain of events initiated by us has wild and unpredictable repercussions?
|
|
Paprika (pumpkin seeds, pins) Installation Jászberény, Hungary August 2000 A site-and-country-specific work on the table of an open fronted restaurant cabin. The surface of the table is covered with paprika, which has been rubbed into the grain of the wood - and pumpkin seeds, which are impaled onto the surface with long dressmakers' pins.
|
|
Precision Indecision Installation 25 Grimwade Street, Ipswich December 2000 A veneer of order with chaos simmering just beneath the surface.
|
|
Surface Tension Installation Mamü Galeria, Budapest, Hungary August 2000 This installation, a large scale, fragmented digital image of my own fingerprint is about the confusion between image and identity, or "Surface Tension". "Image" is on the surface, and is shaped and modelled in accordance with things such as aspirations, peer groups, social constraints, and fashion. Our fingerprint, or "identity", is a paradox in this respect, as it is the only facet of our true identity to appear on the surface.
|
|
Surfacing Installation The Red Dot Gallery, Ipswich February 2000 Although Surfacing is figurative, its physical scale and fragmented nature give it a measure of illegibility, which points to the ambiguity of images and the potential for the imposition of inappropriate meanings. The work invites a range of interpretations from it's indistinct appearance, as to who or what is "surfacing" and from where, and engagement with the nature of its orientation, prompted by the free-standing placement on the floor.
|
|
Inner Space An Installation for EDGE September 1998
|
|
A Design For Living 1 Firstsite at the Minories, Colchester, England January 1998 "A Design For Living" is a series of domestic assemblages - transient site-specific floor pieces made from temporary "throwaway" domestic objects. It deals with the obsessive collection, categorisation and juxtaposition of these objects / multiples, as well as the meditative qualities brought about by the overall aesthetic. Despite being assembled from three-dimensional objects, these pieces have a tranquility dictated by their calm, flat, "two-dimentional" effect. It is not so important that the objects have a domestic origin - but that they are temporary in nature, and the idea that the objects can be taken away from their original context by creating something purely visual, or meditative - or even a space suggestive of somewhere else, such as a garden, or the sea. |
