About

Celia Johnson is an artist, lecturer and researcher.

Her practice is about being in and experiencing the world, finding ways to learn about its places and its things; she's interested in the embodied experience of place and is excited by the stuff of the world and by how we encounter it, by found objects and by archives. She scavenges, collects and assembles images and things to explore and collaborate with places, materials, processes and people.

Walking into, around, and through places, her feet direct her discoveries and lead her practice which is studio and site based, and interdiscipinary. Originally a painter and still very engaged with its material and image making possibilties, her work is concerned with the expanded realm of painting and how that might include an increasingly archive and object based, and materially entangled practice to create constellations of interacting and connecting images and objects.

Interested in failure and precarity as qualities of being in the world and as inherent in the processes of artmaking/labour and of being an artist, she is currently studying for an art practice based PhD at Birmingham City University: The Factory Floor, its Phantoms and Futures; Exploring legacy and labour through a familiar lens at Guy Motors Industrial Park, Wolverhampton. Drawn to the post-industrial landscape of the Midlands where she was brought up, this study is an exploration of contemporary industrial processes and communities informed by hauntology, psychogeography, the reactivation of archives, and the intersection of gender, memory and (work)place. It's a close look at one particular Industrial park and is informed by the relationship between art & industrial work/processes, collapse & transformation, and between public & private histories.

The Factory Floor... is a fledgling online space (a page here) to develop Celia's thinking and interrogate her research findings. Documenting encounters with the Industrial Park, it's a digital site of reflection and speculation that includes writing and experimental work in progress.

celia-johnson@outlook.com

celia.johnson@mail.bcu.ac.uk

c.johnson@hca.ac.uk

Selected Exhibitions

Flock 2 @ red dog, Manchester Contemporary, Manchester Central (11/2022)
Postcards from the Biennale, Venice Touring, Pittstudio, Worcester (10/2022)
Stack 2, West Midlands Open, New Art Gallery, Walsall (04/2022)
Flock (For Rex), Artist On My Street, commissioned artist for Coventry Artspace project, part of City of Culture, (03/2022)
Untitled, Expanded Painting, Air Gallery, Manchester (03/2022)
Stack, Division of Labour, Manchester Contemporary, Manchester Central (11/2021)
Undone, Wells Art Contemporary, Wells Cathedral (08/2021)
Sighting the Ancient Landscape, Croft Castle. (08/2021) Commissioned engagement (walking) artist for Traders Tracks: an Arts Council England funded New Leaf and Salt Road project in partnership with Herefordshire Council’s Library services and the National Trust. https://www.saltroad.org.uk/traders-tracks/
Parade: A Response, The Sidney Nolan Trust. Dance activated installation. (08/2021)
Collective Gesture, Canwood Gallery (08/2019)
Plug, Fully Awake, Freelands Foundation, London (06/2019)
Residency@The Old Market, Hereford (Cashmore&Johnson) (05/2019)
Week of Collaborative Walks, The Sidney Nolan Trust, (07/2018)
'The Fecund Line: A Response to Sidney Nolan's 'Paradise Garden'. Solo Exhibition. The Sidney Nolan Trust, Herefordshire. UK (07/17)
Full Moon Walks. Lines In The Landscape Residency. The Sidney Nolan Trust. (07/2017)
Artist Talk for Walking Women (Part of UTOPIA 2016). Somerset House. http://www.walkingartistsnetwork.org/walking-women/

Participant

Walking and Wellbeing. With Dr Cathy Treadaway.(2015)

www.cathytreadaway.com/research/walk-and-draw/ ‘This investigation is looking at how walking and drawing might contribute to wellbeing and is part of the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) Connected Communities funded project: Urban Flows; Connections, Shared Environments and Environmental Flows – how local walking interventions induce community positivity in urban locations which is a collaboration with Birmingham City University.

CAAPO Cardiff (Creative Assault Art Production Organisation)‘Survivor Residency; The Survivalist Series 2013/14 (Domestic)

Education

PhD Birmingham City University (begun 2022)
MFA (Distinction), Cardiff School of Art, (2014)
PGCE Post-Compulsory Art & Design, Hereford College of Technology, UK (2007)
BA Fine Art, Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design, UK (1999)
BSc Business and Finance, Cass Business School, London, UK (1988)

Academic

Lecturer, module leader, BA Fine Art, Hereford College of Arts (2009 – present)

2023

Add Award Name , Add City