Aperture Foundation and the Photography Program at Parsons present the second installment of the Parsons Lecture Series:

Sarah Anne Johnson
Tuesday, October 5, 6:30 pm
Aperture Gallery & Bookstore
547 West 27 Street, 4th floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

Free Admission
Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis

Born in 1976, Sarah Anne Johnson is an artist who works primarily in Photography, but her practice extends to sculpture, painting, performance, video, and printmaking. All of her work has a strong narrative structure; and she considers Photography the jumping off place for the other activities in her practice. Her series Tree Planting is an ambitious installation, which recorded her summers spent in northern Canada in which she engaged in the communal activity of reforesting as a means of income. In this project, Johnson combined straight photographs with photographs recording “tableaux,” scenes she created with little sculptural figures set in the landscape. This project was acquired by the Guggenheim Museum and was recently shown in the exhibition “Haunted” at the museum. In her second extended series, The Galapagos Project, Johnson continued to draw inspiration from themes of idealism and nature, basing the project on ecological volunteer tourism in the Galapagos Islands. She expanded her mediums from straight photography and tableaux; the artist began to include independent sculpture and paintings in this project. Johnson’s third exhibition and project entitled House on Fire shifts her focus from ecologically minded subjects to her own haunted past. Plagued by her maternal grandmother’s terrifying experimental treatment for postpartum depression, Johnson creates provocative bronze figures of her tormented grandmother and extends the imagery through painting over enlargements of family snapshots. Most recently Johnson has been completing a project begun during an artists residency aboard a schooner on the Arctic Circle. She has responded to the photographs she made by adding painted imagery that is exuberant and apocalyptic.

Johnson received her MFA from Yale University and currently resides in Winnipeg, Canada. She has participated in numerous exhibitions throughout the world, and was recently included in the acclaimed group exhibition “Haunted: Contemporary Photography/Video/Performance” at the Guggenheim Museum, NY; and in November of 2010 will show at The National Gallery of Canada. Sarah Anne Johnson is represented by the Julie Saul Gallery, New York and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto.

Aperture Foundation’s public programming is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. This program also receives generous support from the Kettering Family Foundation, the Henry Nias Foundation, and the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, and the ASMP Foundation.
For additional information, please contact the Photography Office at Parsons The New School for Design, (212) 229-8908, ext 4244