Johanna Bolton MRSS

Johanna Bolton is a visual artist working across sculpture, installation, photography and performance. Since graduating from Chelsea College in 2014, she has had a number of residencies and exhibitions in the UK and internationally. Her first solo show was in 2018 at Borough Road Gallery, London South Bank University.

The idea of human presence and movement leaving behind memories or imprints in material form is key to the work of Johanna Bolton. She works across sculpture, installation, photography and performance. Johanna has made studies of the kinks and knots of elastic hairbands, patterns deformed by scrunching up paper and the fabric folds at the back of knees. Her work is often interactive - this is sometimes part of the surrounding narrative and, at other times, a way of investigating the relationship between sculptural form and human form.

She says, “I practice a ritual gathering of knowledge, finding coexistence of the sublime and the ridiculous through an honest awe and the complexity of even the most banal of matters… I am interested in the awkwardness of systematic investigations where the end point remains elusive. Whilst my practice is conceptual, it is important for me to work with materials; the resistance I meet there gives the work agency.”

Johanna received the 2021 Gilbert Bayes Award from the Royal Society of Sculptors, the 2022 residency at metal fabricator Benson Sedgwick and was a 2022 Ingram Prize finalist. Previous projects include a residencies at Kew Gardens Herbarium and the Bomberg Archive, London South Bank University and exhibitions at Gerlesborgs Konsthall, Sweden and Edicola Spoleto / MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, Italy.