Helen Johnson: Warm Ties
Edited by Juliette Desorgues and Talia Linz
Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and Artspace, Sydney
Helen Johnson’s densely layered large-scale canvases explore the complexity of the colonial relationship between Australia and Britain. Her exhibition, ‘Warm Ties’ was comprised of six newly commissioned works that resituate 19th-century images of the white man as an imperialist brute, a sycophant and a greedy solipsist. In one painting, a man pleasures himself as the lyrics to the Australian national anthem are whispered into his ear, a portrait of Queen Victoria cloaked in shackles looks on; while in another the working class get ‘screwed’ by the wealthy elite, further emphasised by dole lines, money notes and subtle yet provocative leg spreads. Install shots and detailed views fill the pages of this accompanying publication, explained in texts by Stephen Gilchrist and Helen Hughes.
