A monumental installation by Sarah Anne Johnson: "Untitled (Schooner and Fireworks)" at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts – a gift from the Cirque du Soleil

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has announced a set of two major acquisitions by the Winnipeg artist Sarah Anne Johnson (1976). These works, given by the Cirque du Soleil, consist of Untitled (Schooner and Fireworks), 2012, a monumental installation over 635 cm in diameter, and Explosion Panorama (2013), a panoramic photograph enhanced with coloured inks (76 cm x 238 cm). They are associated with her famous series Arctic Wonderland, which she did following a creative residency in Svalbard, Norway (2009), where she was invited by the organisation The Arctic Circle, a programme for the foundation The Farm (USA).

Nathalie Bondil, MMFA Director and Chief Curator stated, “This engaged, and particularly delicate, complex and spectacular installation is a reflection of the paradox of our threatened nature in the Anthropocene epoch. It symbolizes the vulnerable place of humans in the fragile ship of life, in the eyes of a young woman, dazzled by the tumult of the northern lights, and concerned about the dark storm clouds. Beyond the emotion it stirs, its evocative power strikes both the imagination and one’s consciousness. The MMFA is extremely proud to be given this work for the 21st century, one of great appeal to both the heart and mind, by our friends the Cirque du Soleil.”

“The MMFA has such a fantastic collection, I’m extremely proud to be part of it,” said Sarah Anne Johnson. She added, “My art practice often involves an element of adventure, of travelling to unknown places and sharing powerful experiences with the people I meet. As a photographer, my challenge becomes to record with a camera experiences that refuse to be reduced to a single frame. Often this leads me to paint on or otherwise manipulate the photograph’s surface. Occasionally, as with this piece, it prompts me to work sculpturally, and in this case I felt that to capture the vastness – the awesomeness – of the Arctic, I would need a sculpture with scale and presence... something to make you step back and marvel."

The installation piece Untitled (Schooner and Fireworks) consists of a traditional wooden table bearing a model schooner, above which, hanging from the ceiling, is an immense dark and coloured structure, like a multi‐coloured storm cloud. Within this mass may be seen glasses, dishes, heat‐moulded structures in which brightly coloured lights appear, producing various bursting and sparkling effects. This cloud, both fantastic and worrying, could remind one of fireworks or a tornado, and seems to descend almost as far as the schooner.

“The acquisition of this immersive installation by Sarah Anne Johnson is quite exceptional. It’s an emblematic piece that intelligently conveys the sensitive reaction she had to the landscapes and immenseness of the Arctic. This installation exemplifies the vitality of the contemporary art scene in Winnipeg,” commented Geneviève Goyer‐Ouimet, Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Curator of Quebec and Canadian Contemporary Art.

The installation echoes a complementary photograph, Explosion Panorama, the artist’s source of inspiration. If we look carefully at this panorama, we see that the schooner (The Noorderlicht) is the ship on which the artist did her residency, and the people crossing the landscape are the members of the crew.

Agathe Alie, Senior Director, Community Relations, Cirque du Soleil, stated, “By entrusting this work to the MMFA, the Cirque du Soleil wishes to share with the public at large its passion for art and artists. This monumental and spectacular work conveys a social and environmental message that we hope will help raise people’s awareness.”

A famous series: Arctic Wonderland (2009)

This series arose from an artist’s residency on a ship in the Arctic in 2009. Johnson was invited by the organisation The Arctic Circle (USA) for a 21‐day visit with other artists, and also with activists and scientists. The artists’ goal was to create works from their experience on the ship, and Johnson took a large number of pictures. During the voyage, the participants, like Johnson, were in a constant state of amazement, struck by both the magnificence and fragility of nature. However, on her return, Johnson could not detect any traces of this emotion in her photographs. From this observation, that is, that the images she had did not reflect her experience, she decided to rework them by heightening them with coloured inks and gouache. The added pigments take the form of confetti, of fireworks, of geometrical shapes appearing over the ocean. They translate her experience and poetically evoke the pollution linked to over‐consumption. 

Within this series, the photograph Fireworks was Johnson’s favourite work. It was a photograph of a schooner (The Noorderlicht) with fireworks created with coloured inks above it. The artist liked the composition, the effects and the symbolism. To her eye, it represented the current environment in the face of our civilization’s reckless race towards its own destruction. Johnson planned to turn Fireworks into a monumental work to recreate her experience.

The artist developed her plans during a five‐week residency at the Banff Centre (2011). She worked on it with John Wardrope and craftspersons from Acryl Design (Winnipeg), which specializes in custom‐made manufacturing. It took several months to create the armature and add the heat‐moulded plastic made from bottles and other plastic pieces. She then inserted strings of lights to give the impression of fireworks. A table on which a miniature schooner is placed, was added. The installation Untitled (Schooner with Fireworks) was first presented at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in the exhibition Winnipeg Now (2012). (Reviewed in Galleries West)

A major artist on the contemporary scene

Born in 1976, Sarah Anne Johnson is an emerging artist from Winnipeg. She earned her BFA from the University of Manitoba and an MFA from the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Ace Art Gallery in Winnipeg (2010), the Division Gallery (2013 and 2015), the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (2015), the Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh in the United States (2015) and Gallery 44 in Toronto  (2016).

Her works have been selected for some prestigious group exhibitions: Dream State: Contemporary Photography and Video at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2016), Nei Xiao/WaiBao – IN&OUTsource, at the Art Gallery of Nanjing University of the Arts in China (2014), Builders, the Canadian Biennial 2012 at the National Gallery of Canada, Watch This Space: Contemporary Art from the AGO, Toronto (2012), Oh Canada, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (2012) and Winnipeg Now, at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (2012).

Her works have been collected in Canada (MMFA, Art Gallery of Ontario, National Gallery of Canada, etc.) and internationally (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum, New York). The MMFA has a photograph from the series Tree Planting titled Nadine (2003) and presented in the exhibition She Photographs.

In 2015, she was shortlisted for the prestigious Sobey Art Award. She completed an artist’s residency at the Banff Centre in 2013. In 2008, she was awarded the Grange Prize by the Art Gallery of Ontario and Aeroplan. She is represented by the Julie Saul Gallery in New York, the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto and the Division Gallery in Montreal.

Source: Montreal Museum of Fine Art