Michael Johnson: Colour & Convergence

Michael Johnson, born in Sydney in 1938, is known as one of
Australia’s most innovative colourists and a ground-breaking figure in abstract
painting.

Johnson taught art in London from 1960 to 1967, after working for
celebrated sculptors Brian Wall and Anthony Caro. His shaped, hard edge
chromatic canvases of this time explored the potential of scale, optically,
saturated colour and geometric poetics. Upon his return to Sydney in 1967,
Johnson held his first solo exhibitions and the following year participated in
the landmark show The Field at the National Gallery of Victoria,
cementing his influence on contemporary Australian painting.

From 1969 to 1976, Johnson was based in New York, continuing
to explore colour, depth and surface, stretching his own canvases, mixing
pigments, and developing works that prioritised sensory immersion. His
breakthrough came upon return to Australia where the fusion between primal
colour and organic form led to major large works that forged a new, distinctly
personal language.

Michael Johnson has exhibited widely both nationally and
internationally, and was included in international exhibitions the UNESCO
Biennale, France (1968); the São Paulo Biennale, Brazil (1969) as
well as The Australian Biennale and a major mid-career
retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1988). Among
Johnson’s awards and commissions are works for the Sydney Conference Centre and
the State Bank of New South Wales (now Commonwealth Bank of Australia), Sydney.
He is represented in all major Australian state and regional collections, New
Zealand’s Chartwell Collection, and in numerous significant corporate and
private collections in Australia and internationally. He was awarded the Wynne
Prize in 2014. Ellamatta the largest work of his career - towering at 4.5 metres high -
was commissioned by the Walker Corporation in 2018 for Parramatta Square,
a culmination of six decades of painting.

Johnson’s creative arc is broad, expanding the possibilities of abstract art as a
discipline by continuing to roam freely between minimalism
and lyricism. Continuing to paint full time, his painting enters its seventh
decade. The works in this exhibit draw on key paintings and works on paper from
his private studio archive.