Notice Board

Sarah Anne Johnson's latest exhibition is a continuation of themes she explored in House on Fire (2009) and Dancing With The Doctor (2010).  These works reflect on trauma sustained as a result of CIA experiments on mind control undertaken from 1950 to 1973.  Under the banner of MKUltra, US and Canadian citizens were administered paralytic and psychedelic drugs, subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, isolation, sensory deprivation, drug-induced coma, and verbal and sexual abuse by researchers and psychologists studying the alteration of mental states and brain function.  In the 1950s Johnson's maternal grandmother, Velma Orlikow, sought help for postpartum depression and became an unwilling and unwitting participant in the experiments. 

Winnipeg-based Sarah Anne Johnson received her BFA from the University of Manitoba in 2002 and went on to complete her MFA in Photography at the Yale School of Art in 2004.  Her first exhibition Tree Planting (2005) was purchased by the Guggenheim Museum.  The National Gallery of Canada (NGC) bought most of The Galapagos Project (2007).  Johnson was chosen along with other reputable Canadian artists by curator Jonathan Shaughnessy to be shown in Builders (2012), a featured exhibition for the biennale at NGC.  Johnson is a finalist for the Sobey Art Award and was nominated on the shortlist in 2011 and longlist in 2009.  She is represented by Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto and Julie Saul Gallery in New York. - See more at: http://saag.ca/art/exhibitions/0702-hospital-hallway#sthash.kUpr4uJ7.dpuf