Helen Johnson
Memory is not a recording device: on Eliza Hutchison’s Hair in the Gate, a biograph
Article, 1 Nov 2013
In Australia, we struggle to insist on identity even as we are engulfed by the unrepresentable. I feel that this is a condition of being Australian. The moment we believe we have defeated the unrepresentable is the moment we have once again failed, retreating into construct only to await the next encroachment. Hutchison’s work is […]
Helen Johnson
Is the research your practice, or is the practice your research?
Article, 1 Jul 2013
The question of research in relation to practice is one that every artist undertaking a PhD must struggle with. Below is an attempt to lay out my own understanding of this relationship as I enter the Winter of the final six months of my PhD candidature at Monash University. For if, treating it [fine art] […]
Helen Johnson
It seems like everyone knows everyone already so let’s get to work
Article, 1 Dec 2012
1 It is in the social that painting finds criticality. Painting’s particular set of constraints, its two-dimensionality, its ‘faciality’, its frontal, pictorial flatness, do not detract from this function. Painting by its nature sits apart. In this way it is predisposed to make comment. At the recent Paul Taylor symposium,[^1] someone — I think it […]
Helen Johnson
Scott Mitchell: A silent modification of the specific present
Article, 1 Jun 2012
As I ponder how Scott Mitchell’s way of being in the world might be positioned or discussed in relation to broader frameworks of art and design, it becomes increasingly apparent that this distinction is an afterthought.[^1] He privileges neither art nor design, as such inhabiting a space where both modes of practice might in some […]
