TIM JOHNSON | FLOATING WORLDS
8 JUNE - 10 JULY 2016
Tim Johnson makes a welcome return to the Canberra art scene with his solo exhibition Floating Worlds. The exhibition includes recent paintings over the last two years since he featured in the Nancy Sever Gallery’s inaugural exhibition.
Often described as ‘floating worlds,’ Tim Johnson’s extraordinarily powerful paintings embrace the spiritual iconography of a range of cultures. The paintings are metaphysical landscapes. His is an individual journey of spiritual self-discovery that has an enormous absorptive capacity but which always remains anchored in his unique vision.
Against the background of Aboriginal dot painting Tim Johnson lays out his personal iconography, drawing on Buddhist, Tibetan and Chinese art. His painting style is influenced by these sources in both a technical and philosophical way, and by his collaboration with artists from these cultures.
Tim Johnson has long been one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists. In 2009 the Art Gallery of NSW and the Queensland Art Gallery both presented a major survey exhibition of his work. He is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, all state and regional galleries and in major corporate and private collections in Australia and overseas.
Artist statement
These new paintings range through familiar areas of interest. They are described as "floating worlds" because images from a diverse set of mainly cultural references float across the canvas in an ambiguous multi-level pictorial space. They are floating as if they were already in the mind, accumulated as memories, associations, thoughts and signs.
This approach to painting is strongly influenced by the artist's visits to Papunya in the 1980's and the show includes many references to this time in the artist's life, drawn from photographs that are being constantly re-invented and re-contextualised. The work is still collaborative and references Buddhism, drawing from Tibetan traditions as well as the kind of contemporary buddhist art you might find for sale on the internet.
The Buddhist idea of the Pure Land is used because it represents a better world than the one in which we live and allows the artist to take an idealised, utopian world view. Art is the perfect vehicle for expressing an approach like this, with it's own language of cultural and spiritual signifiers and it's own history of critiquing, documenting and romanticising the social.
UFO's come into the picture as something that is an unknown but, in a sense, of the future. It is something that seems to be beyond our understanding, yet has been part of world culture for some time now. Exra-terrestrials or off world entities are not that far removed from the gods, deities, starmen, visitors and lawgivers of the ancient past.
Artworks included in the exhibition:
(for details of the works, please hold cursor over the image)
Views of the exhibition
TIM JOHNSON CV
1947 Born in Sydney. Lives and works in Sydney.
1966-70 Studied at the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1970 Off the Wall, Gallery A, Sydney.
1971 Installation as Conceptual Scheme, Inhibodress, Sydney.
Installation as Conceptual Scheme, The Mezzanine, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Canada.
1972 Diary, Voyeur, Fittings, Disclosures, etc., Pinacotheca, Melbourne.
1973 Art Week, University of Queensland, Brisbane.
1979 Mori Gallery, Sydney.
1982 Wheel of Life, Mori Gallery, Sydney.
1984 The Drunken Boat, Mori Gallery, Sydney.
1985 Conceptual Painting, Union Street Gallery, Sydney.
1986 Esoteric Landscape, Mori Gallery, Sydney.
Languish, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.
1987 Papunya Revisited, Bellas Gallery, Brisbane.
Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.
1988 Richard Pomeroy Gallery, London.
1989 A Survey 1956-1989, Mori Gallery, Sydney.
Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.
1991 Armageddon, Mori Gallery, Sydney.
Chapman Gallery, Canberra.
1992 Bellas Gallery, Brisbane.
Visualisation, Mori Gallery, Sydney.
1993 Shareware, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.
Across Cultures, Ian Potter Gallery, University of Melbourne.
1994 Tim Johnson, Glasgow Museum, Glasgow.
Asia, Mori Gallery, Sydney.
Chapman Gallery, Canberra.
1995 Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.
Non La, Bellas Gallery, Brisbane.
4 Directions, Mori Gallery, Sydney
1996 Chapman Gallery, Canberra.
1997 On The Internet, Mori Gallery, Sydney.
CD installation, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.
1998 Alien Land, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.
The Sources are Real, Mori Gallery, Sydney.
Tim Johnson and Karma Phuntsok, Bellas Gallery, Brisbane.
2000 What the Eye Knows, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.
Collaborations, Bellas Gallery, Brisbane.
Far out, Mori Gallery, Sydney.
Pure Land, Chapman Gallery, Canberra.
2001 Tim Johnson, Lord Mori Gallery, Los Angeles, USA.
Presence, Paddington Uniting Church, Sydney.
2002 Bellas Gallery, Brisbane.
2003 Insignia, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.
Threads of Destiny, Mori Gallery, Sydney, (with My Le Thi).
Karyn Lovegrove Gallery, LA, USA.
Bellas Gallery, Brisbane.
2004 Serindia, Mori Gallery, Sydney.
2005 Far Out, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.
Full Moon, Bellas Milani Gallery, Brisbane, Queensland
Punk Paintings and Prints, Bellas Milani Gallery, Brisbane, Queensland
2007 Anomalous, Lister Gallery, Perth, WA.
Nurture, Bellas Milani Gallery, Brisbane, Queensland
Tim Johnson, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, Victoria.
2008 Graphomania, Chapman Gallery, Canberra, ACT
2009 Emporium, Lister gallery, Perth, WA
2009-10 Painting Ideas, Art Gallery of N.S.W. and Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
2010 Emulation, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney, NSW
World's Apart, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, Victoria
2012 Optic nerve, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, Victoria
2013 The Luminous Ground, Ikon Gallery. Birmingham, United Kingdom
2014 Otherkin, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney NSW
Eye to Eye, Nancy Sever Gallery, Canberra, ACT
Conceptual Work / New Paintings, Milani Gallery, Brisbane, Queensland
Performance, Gertrude St, Melbourne
2015 Open Source, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, Victoria
2016 Conspiracies, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney, NSW
Floating Worlds, Nancy Sever Gallery, Canberra, ACT
2017 Metamodernism, Milani Gallery Brisbane, Queensland
2018 The View from Mount Meru, Nancy Sever Gallery, Canberra
2019 Nom de Plume, Dominik Mersch Gallery Sydney NSW
Syncretism, Nancy Sever Gallery Canberra, ACT
Tim Johnson: Artist Room, MCA Collection
2020 Tim Johnson: Artist Room, MCA Collection Sydney NSW
Empathy Milani Gallery Brisbane Queensland
Parallel Universe Tolarno Galleries Melbourne Victoria
2021 Inter-are Nancy Sever Gallery Canberra ACT
Tim Johnson Artists Room MCA Sydney
Creed Sofitel Hotel, Melbourne Victoria
2022 Mise en scene Dominik Mersch Gallery Sydney NSW
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1970 Neon-Light Installations, Tim Johnson and Peter Kennedy, Gallery A, Sydney, NSW.
1971 Activities, Inhibodress, Sydney, NSW.
Kaldor Art Project 2, I want to leave a nice well done child here (20 Australian artists). Bonython Gallery, Sydney, NSW
1973 Recent Australian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW
Object and idea, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria
1978 Act 1: Performance and Participatory Art, ANU Arts Centre, Canberra, ACT
Political Practice, Galleria Civica, Modena, Italy
1978-79 Artists Books: Bookworks Ewing and George Patton Galleries and elsewhere, touring Australia
1979 Third Biennale of Sydney: European Dialogue, (Film program), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW.
Contemporary Australian Artists: A Survey, touring the United States of America.
1983 Australian Perspecta ’83, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW
1984 The Politics of Picturing, Institute of Modern Art and Tasmanian School of Art Gallery, Tasmania.
1985 Dot and Circle, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria
Close Remarks, Artspace, Sydney., NSW
Two Worlds Collide: Cultural Convergence in Aboriginal and White Australian Art, Artspace, Sydney, NSW.
1986 Two Worlds, Lismore Regional Gallery.
Sixth Biennale of Sydney: Origins, Originality and Beyond, Art Gallery of New South Wales and Pier 2/3, Sydney, NSW
Symbolism and Landscape, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, NSW
1987 Shadow of Reason, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Queensland
Young Australians, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria
A New Romance, ANG, Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra.
1988 Creating Australia: 200 years of Art 1788-1988, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, SA.
Stories of Australian Art, Commonwealth Institute, London. UK.
Contemporary Australian Art to China, state museums of Beijing, Wuhan, Shanghai,
and Guangzhou, China
1989 Inhibodress 1970-72, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Queensland
1990 Paraculture, Artists Space, New York. USA.
Art Frankfurt, Kunstmesse, Frankfurt, Germany
Out of Asia, Heide Gallery, Melbourne and Regional Galleries.
L’Été Australien à Montpelier, Musée Fabre, Galérie Saint Ravy, Montpelier, France
Balance, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Queensland
Art Dock, Noumea, New Caledonia
1991 Chicago International Fine Art Fair, Chicago, USA.
Off the Wall/In the Air: A Seventies Selection, Monash University Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria
Artists Make Books, Linden Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria
Rivers, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Victoria
International Contemporary Art Fair, pacifico Yokohama, Exhibition Hall, Japan
Domino I: Collaborations Between Artists, Ian Potter Gallery, Melbourne.
1992 Documenta IX, Kassel, Germany.
Ninth Biennale of Sydney: The Boundary Rider, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
1993 Wits End, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, NSW
Art Frankfurt, Messe Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.
Art Cologne, Koln Messe, Cologne, Germany.
Luminaries, Monash University, Melbourne.
Inaugural Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art at Heide, Melbourne.
1993-94 Identities: Art from Australia, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan; Wollongong City Gallery
and Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Queensland.
1994 Light and Movement, Revisiting Minimalism, Museum Contemporary Art, Sydney, NSW
25 Years of Performance Art in Australia, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, NSW
1995 Antipodean Currents, Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA
Asia & Oceania Influence, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney., NSW
1996 Hidden Treasures II, S.H. Erwin Gallery, Sydney, NSW
Colonial, Post-Colonial, Museum of Modern Art, Heide, Melbourne, Victoria
Art Cologne, Cologne Germany.
Australia: Familiar and Strange, Seoul Arts Centre, Korea.
1997 Spirit + Place, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. NSW
Objects + Ideas, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. NSW
Plastic Fantastic, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. NSW
Inside, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany.
Similar, (with My Le Thi) 4A Gallery, Sydney, NSW
Dead Sun, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW
MacCaughey Prize Exhibition, National Gallery of Victoria, Victoria.
1998 Mingling of Cultures, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. ACT.
Crossing Boundaries, (with Zen Yipu and My Le Thi), Drill Hall Gallery, ANU, Canberra.
Wilderness Society Exhibition, Mori Gallery, Sydney, NSW
Verve, S.H. Erwin Gallery, Sydney.. NSW
Commonwealth Art, Malaysia.
Be Seeing You: one night of video, Mori Gallery, Sydney, NSW
Dylan, Tim Johnson and Greg Weight, Michael Nagy Fine Art, Sydney, NSW
1998-99 Ways of Being, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, and touring Australia.
1999 Tolarno Galleries, Perth Festival, Perth, WA.
We are Australian, National Touring Exhibition, Melbourne,
Bright and Shining, 4A Gallery, Sydney.
Bright and Shining, Tokyo, Australian Embassy, Tokyo, Japan
Global Arts link inaugural exhibition, Ipswich, Queensland.
Chicago Art Fair, Chicago, USA.
The Rose Crossing, Queensland Art Gallery, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong.
What John Berger Saw, ANU, and touring.
The Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand.
Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, Queensland
2000 The Rose Crossing, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney; Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery, Sydney.
Restricting the Palette, Colour and Land, Canberra, ACT
From Appreciation to Appropriation, Adelaide Arts Festival, Adelaide, South Australia.
Project 2/2000, an affiliated exhibition of Biennale of Sydney, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW.
Flight Patterns, MOCA, Los Angeles, USA
Expressions of Faith, Shenpen Australia, Vaucluse, NSW.
2001 The Mandala Project, Gallery 4A, Asian Australian Arts Centre, Sydney, NSW
3 Views of Emptiness, Monash University, Victoria.
Art/Music: rock, pop, techno, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, NSW
Buddha Radiant Awakening, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney.
Yab Yum, Contemporary Project, Shenpen2, Melbourne.
Viet Nam Voices, Melbourne Museum, Melbourne.
Absolut, LA International Biennial Art Invitational, Los Angeles, USA
2001-02 ‘So you wanna be a rock star’, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.
2002 Imaging Identity and Place, Grafton Regional Gallery, and touring NSW.
Points of View, UTS Art Collection, UTS Gallery, NSW.
Sulman Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
White, Bellas Gallery, Brisbane, queensland
Contemporary Portraiture, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.
Tim Johnson, Lord Mori Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
2003 Museum of Contemporary Art Unpacked II, MCA, Sydney, NSW
Fieldwork: Australian Art 1968-2002, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria
Parallel Worlds, Tim Johnson and My Le Thi, UTS Gallery, Sydney, NSW.
Art and about, Sydney Council Visual art event, Sydney.
2004 The State of Art Peace, Manly Art Gallery, and touring NSW.
Pop, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Queensland
White/Light, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Queensland
MCA Unpacked II - Selections from the MCA Collection, University of S.A., Adelaide, SA
2005 Blast, the influence of Manga, Redcliffe Gallery Complex, Redcliffe, NSW.
Smile of the Buddha, Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, ACT.
2006 The Sound of the Sky, Museum of the Northern Territory, Darwin, NT
Lives and Times, National Gallery of Victoria touring.
2007 Bloodlines Hawkesbury Regional Gallery NSW.
The Luminescent Ground, Wollongong Regional Gallery, NSW.
Multiplicity: Prints and Multiples, MCA Sydney, NSW.
2008 The Visitors, Penrith Regional Gallery, Penrith, NSW.
Gallery A 1964-1983, Campbelltown City Art Gallery, NSW.
Peep, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, Melbourne, Victoria.
Drawn In, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
An Ever Expanding Universe, Pica, Perth.
Yin Yang, SH Ervin Gallery, Sydney, NSW.
Open Air, Portraits in the landscape, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, ACT
Lives and Times: A Selection of Works on tour from the Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, National Gallery of Victoria
touring exhibition
2009 Avoiding myth & message: Australian artists and the literary world, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, NSW
Queensland Art 2009, David Pestorius Projects, Brisbane, Qld.
Australian Paintings, Hamilton Art Gallery, Hamilton
+/— MUMA - , Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, Victoria
2010 Roundabout, City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand We Call Them Pirates Out Here, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, NSW.
Who’s Afraid of Red White & Blue, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, Victoria Sacred Spaces, Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle, NSW WHAT SURROUNDS ME, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney, NSW Top Guns 2010, Richard Martin Australian Art, Sydney, NSW AGENDA 2010, Group Show, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney. NSW Hong Kong Art Fair, Hong Kong.
2011 Black elastic, two umbrellas, a mint leaf and wheels Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, Victoria Tell me Tell me: Australian and Korean art 1976-2011, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, Victoria.
2012 101 Contemporary Australian Artists, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria
5 Bells, Damien Minton Gallery, Redfern, NSW Biennale of Sydney, All Our Relations Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW The Unseen, the 4th Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China Less is More, Heide, Melbourne Victoria Collective Memory, Lake Macquarie Gallery, NSW Exhibition7, Art of Australia, Kunstwerk Sammlung, Nussdorf, Germany Together in Harmony, Australia-Korea show, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea Collaborative Witness: Artists’ responses to the plight of the asylum seeker and refugee, University of Queensland, Brisbane Recent Acquisitions, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Melbourne Singapore Art Fair, Singapore Hong Kong Art Fair, Hong Kong New Psychedelia, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane
2013 Four Corners of the World, Hite Collection, Seoul, Korea Australia, Royal Academy of Arts London, England Mix Tape 1980's, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Victoria Collective Identity(Ies), Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery Wildcards: Bill Henson Shuffles The Deck, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne Dominik Mersch Gallery at Galerie Patrick Ebensperger, Berlin, Germany Haute école d’art et design, Genève, Geneva, Switzerland Nah Und Fern: Landscape Painting in the 21st Century, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney Sydney Contemporary, Sydney, NSW
2014 Light Performance, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, Victoria Sound+Heard, Goma Brisbane Queensland Wynne Art competition, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW.
2015 Sulman Art Competition Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW Art as a Verb, Monash University Art Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria and Artspace, Sydney Aliens, conspiracies, Dominik Mersch Gallery, Sydney, NSW.
Conversations, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW Art Basel, Hong Kong Sydney Contemporary, Sydney, NSW
2016 Sulman Art Competition. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, NS Country and Western: Landscape re-imagined – S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney NSW Black White & Restive - Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle, NSW Paris Photo, Paris, France Australian and Chinese artists, Beijing, China Beyond the Tower, University of Queensland Gallery Art Museum, Brisbane, Queensland Art Basil, Hong Kong
2017 Sugar Spin at GOMA, Brisbane, Queensland Buddha's Smile at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Victoria Charming Confusion, Vermillion Gallery, Sydney, NSW Landing Points Penrith Regional gallery, Emu Plains, NSW In site: Process Performance, Documentation University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane Queensland
2018 Transcendance Live in Art Gallery, Sydney, NSW Redlands Art Competition NAS Sydney NSW
2019 Salon des refuses S H Erwin Gallery Sydney NSW
Winter Group Exhibition Vermilion Gallery Sydney NSW
In Full View Lyon Housemuseum Melbourne, Vic.
Kaldor Public Art Projects AGNSW Sydney NSW
Weeping Gasoline Dream 33 Tinning St Brunswick Victoria
2020 Tim Johnson Early works, Annette Larkin Fine Art Sydney
2021 Tree Story Monash University Museum of Art Victoria
Sense China Cultural Centre Sydney NSW
2022 Light and Darkness Chau Chak Wing Museum Sydney University NSW
Incinerator Gallery Willoughby Sydney
No Point in Time Vermillion Gallery Sydney
COLLECTIONS
National Gallery of Australia and all State Galleries
All Australian State Galleries
Allen Allen & Hemsley
Fairfax Collection
Griffith University, Queensland
MOCA, Brisbane. Queensland
Monash University. Victoria
The Joseph Brown Collection
The Kerry Stokes Collection
University of New South Wales. Sydney, NSW
The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT
Sydney University
Macquarie Bank
Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW
Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs NT
Regional Galleries
Private collections in Australia and overseas
AWARDS
Australia Council Fellowship (1997-8)
Woollahra Art Competition
Drummoyne Art Competition
C.A.S. Art Competition, NSW
Mosman Art Prize
Sceggs Redlands Art Prize
Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize.
TALKS
1988 ICA, London.
Sydney University, Sydney.
1993 Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.
1995 Queensland University.Brisbane, Queensland
University of New South Wales, Sydney,NSW
1998 National Gallery of Australia., Canberra ACT
Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney,NSW
1999 Sydney University, Sydney.NSW
Canberra School of Art, ANU, Canberra, ACT
Dubbo Gallery, Dubbo, NSW.
Australian Embassy Tokyo, Japan
2000 Sydney University, Sydney, NSW
Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery, NSW
Art Gallery of New South Wales, ‘Conversation with Artists'
2004 Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane. Queensland
2009 Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Queensland
2012 Canberra School of Art, ANU.
Dubbo Regional Gallery, Dubbo, NSW.
Australian Embassy, Tokyo, Japan
Campbelltown City Bicentennial Art Gallery
TEACHING
1993 Guest Lecturer, Northern Territory University, Darwin.
1994 Residential Landscape Workshop, Flying Art School, Lake Julius, Queensland.
1998 Electronic Identities in East Asia Workshop, ANU, Canberra.
1999 Visiting Fellow, Canberra School of Art, ANU.
Ways of Being Workshop, Dubbo, NSW.
2000 Sydney University, Sydney.
2001-03 Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney.