Laurel Johannesson

Background

About Laurel Johannesson

Laurel Johannesson studied at the University of Calgary, the University of Saskatchewan, and the Royal College of Art in London. She has twice been a visiting artist and scholar at the American Academy in Rome and an invited artist in residence at institutions in Iceland, Greece, and the South of France. She is a fellow of the Bau Institute [Italy], has had the rare opportunity to research at the Vatican Library, and was an invited artist in residence at Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy. Laurel’s work often takes place in or around water in site-specific locations and depicts uncanny juxtapositions between body and nature, realism and dream. She works across various mediums, including photography, experimental film, digital collage and painting, as well as moving images and interactivity to create imagery that addresses our understanding of time and space. She is particularly interested in the beach as a liminal or temporal space and the intersection of art and technology.Her work has been exhibited extensively in Switzerland, Italy, Greece, England, France, India, Iceland, Portugal, Egypt, Argentina, Germany, Japan, Chile, Taiwan, Russia, the United States, and Canada. Most recently, her moving images were exhibited at the Athens Digital Arts Festival | Techno(s)cene in Greece, and Photo Basel in Switzerland.Laurel’s work is in numerous collections, including the Government of Canada Department of Foreign Affairs, Suncor Energy, Palazzo Monti, Encana Corporation, Cenovus Energy, Glenbow Museum, the Royal College of Art, and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, as well as private collections in Canada, the United States, Italy, Greece, Iceland, and the United Kingdom. Laurel’s work has been featured in publications such as L’Œil de la Photographie / The Eye of Photography, Designboom, CLOT magazine, Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, The Art Talk Magazine, Elle Canada, and more.Laurel is a Professor at the Alberta University of the Arts. Her research in the area of temporality, the moving image, interactivity, and generative art has been presented and published at peer-reviewed academic conferences in Italy in Rome, Florence, Milan, and Ravenna; the University of Greenwich, London UK; and the University of California – Los Angeles. She has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Alberta University of the Arts, and Polaroid.Laurel is represented by Herringer Kiss Gallery in Calgary, Canada and Artpowher Contemporary in Zurich, Switzerland.