Johanna Bolton
I work with sculpture, photography, installation and performance. I was once told I have a ‘talent for chaos’. It is a nice backhanded compliment, and probably true. I do find complexity very interesting, and a lot of my art practice seems to be about ways to deal with complexity and attempts to impose order.
I sometimes use processes borrowed from science to isolate cause and visualise the effect of changing one thing at a time. It leads to a serial process, archives, dealing with multitudes: separating, sieving, stacking, storing.
I have made studies of elastic bands, scrunched up patterns, folds in worn clothes. Why persist in looking at such small everyday things? Is it a kind of feminist scientist movement? Or just a way to say - look, we cannot even fully understand the simplest, most common matter around. As soon as we start really looking at something it expands and reveals itself as unknowable. I was once asked what I found so interesting about elastic band knots, and my answer is that it is because the possible shape variations of this simple loop are practically endless.
At its core it is probably an attempt to experience something as old-fashioned as the sublime. My awe in front of the complexity and chaos of the everyday is enough, I do not need to seek out high cliffs and waterfalls.
In this reflection of the high in the low, from the ridiculous to the sublime, in the unending bathos of everyday life, lies also a knife-edge balancing act between the deadly serious and the seriously funny. The artist, deep in thought, slips on a carelessly discarded metaphor and falls on her arse. It is interesting to note that Derrida (yes, sorry, but bear with me…) speaks of the moment of moving from play to earnestness as the moment of experiencing the sublime. Which also happens to be the balancing act I am attempting in the studio every day. So, yes, I think chasing the sublime, or at least surprise is a really important element of my practice.
There are many other edges I like to explore in my work. For example, what happens when moving between 2D and 3D, the miraculous increase in complexity when surface becomes a shape. The exciting meeting point when my agency meets the agency of the material I work with and the outcome is unpredictable and precarious. And even more chaotic and full of possibilities is the meeting of bodies when performers interact with my sculptures, adding movement and becoming part of the work.
Johanna Bolton
Instagram: @johanna.bolton
Biography
Johanna is a Swedish artist living between Hartlepool and London. She is a member of the NewBridge Collective in Newcastle 2024/25. Johanna received the 2021 Gilbert Bayes Award for emerging sculptors, the 2022 Benson Sedgwick metal work residency and was a 2022 Ingram Prize finalist. She has been artist in residence at Kew Gardens Herbarium, the Bomberg Archive at London South Bank University and at Cel Del Nord in Spain.
Johanna has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad, including Gerlesborgs Konsthall in Sweden and Edicola Spoleto / MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, Italy. She is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors, with art works held in private and public collections.
Selected Exhibitions, Residencies, Performances and Events
2025
‘Seriality in Art and Nature’, display in Kew Gardens Herbarium, London
2024
Residency in Kew Gardens Herbarium, researching hairy plants (Apocynacea)
Collective Studio Cohort 24-25, The NewBridge Project, Newcastle
BLINK, Room Share 6; curated by Eleanor Bedlow, Safehouses, London
’50/50’, Unit 1, London
‘In Out’, Hive Curates - Stratford, London
Solo Exhibition: ‘HUSK!’, Clements & Co Gallery, London
‘Material Truths’, Old Parcel Office, Scarborough
2023
Solo Exhibition: ‘The Fold is the Smallest Unit in a Labyrinth’, Canalside Gallery, London
‘The Mother of All’, Blue on The Hill Gallery, London
Residency at Cel Del Nord, Ortigà, Spain
‘Works That Never Came to Life’, curated by Winnie Hall, 3D women!, Art Hub Studios, London
HUM Micro Gallery, Ottawa, Canada
’Spaces, Places’, curated by NOHAT, Broadway Gallery, Letchworth Garden City
‘On The Edge’, Exhibition with the London Group of Royal Society of Sculptors, Espacio Gallery, London
2022
Benson Sedgwick 2022 Residency
‘Ingram Prize 2022 Exhibition’, Unit 1 Gallery, London
‘BLUSH’, ASC Gallery, London
'Gilbert Bayes Award 2021 Exhibition', Cromwell Place, London and CASC Gallery, Chester
‘Meet me Halfway — On the Line’, Residency and Exhibition at Eastcheap Project Space, Letchworth Garden City
2021
‘The Feuilleton: I Will Bear Witness’, Edicola Spoleto / MACRO in Rome, Italy. Curated by Dr Jo Melvin
‘Conditions Exhibition’, Whitgift Centre, Croydon, London
‘This is not a Shop’, Non Place Collective, Bath Fringe Arts Festival
‘Make Something That Makes You Feel Good’, Virtual Reality Private View, LUVA Gallery
‘Body Building’, Small House Gallery, London
2020
Received the 2021Gilbert Bayes Award from Royal Society of Sculptors
2019
‘Att komma hem’, Gerlesborgs Konsthall, Sweden
'RE:FORM" event for Art Licks Weekend, EG-1 Project Space, London
'Shutters!', Arebyte Victoria, London
Kelder Gallery Residency (AltMFA), London
2018
Solo Exhibition: ‘ARCHIVE: Reimagining the Borough Road Collection’, Borough Road Gallery, London
Koppel Project Gallery Residency, London
Commission and Residency at David Bomberg Collection, London South Bank University (April- October 2018)
‘This might be the Future’ (AltMFA), Shonibare Guest Projects, London
2017
Kew Gardens Herbarium Residency (November 2017- February 2018)
‘Emergency 2017’, Word of Warning, Manchester
2016
‘The Observer Effect’, Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art
‘PREFAB-Lab’, Bath Fringe Arts Festival
‘I TWANG’ performance at the Royal Academy, Burlington Gardens Festival
‘Elastic’. Performative Art Research at the Nunnery Gallery, London
2015
‘The Motion of Matter’, The Rum Factory Project Space, London
2014
Chelsea College Degree Show
Education
2019-2021 Conditions Studio Programme
2016-2019 Alt-MFA
2011-2014 BA Fine Arts, Chelsea College of Art
Awards
Finalist for the Ingram Prize 2022
Gilbert Bayes Award, Royal Society of Sculptors 2021
Shortlisted for the Chelsea ACME studio award 2014
Selected Press and Publications
Axess Magazine, no 7, October 2022 “Granens estetik och den svenska folksjälen”, by Cecilia Nikpay
Soanyway Magazine Vol.2 Issue 13, September 2022, “A material record of walking”
Art Monthly no 450, October 2021, “Conditions”, by Jamila Prowse, p.32
Bohusläningen, 25/6/2019, “Konst utan slut för den som besöker Gerlesborg”
‘Circle or Oval?: Concepts, Non-identity and the Lifeworld’ Symposium: Material Others and Other Materialities, UAL Informed Matters, IKLECTIK Labs 2016
