Matthew Johnson
circles of light
b. 1963, London
Lives & works in Melbourne, Australia
Painting as an illusory field for the viewer to penetrate.
Matthew Johnson's artistic apprenticeship has been an eclectic if not a modernist one. A Melbourne-based painter, his diverse travel and cultural experiences are distilled through the archetypal filter of oil and pigment. The underlying compositional structures of his paintings are repetitive — grids, geometric patterns, stripes or sequential arrangements drawn from nature.
He is best known for oil paintings of delicately blended circles — like the pixels of a magnified picture blurred into pattern — fields of subdued colour that billow up into a sensory atmosphere of light and dark. His work emulates an abstract environment built on variables in nature and the man-made: a static viewpoint constantly veiled by visible and invisible forces. There is no single state of condition.
A graduate of the National Art School, East Sydney (1984), Johnson has exhibited consistently since the late 1980s in Australia and internationally — Paris, Hong Kong, New York, Toronto and Hanoi among them — and has completed numerous residencies throughout Europe and Australia, including the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, and the Australia Council Barcelona studio. Alongside the paintings, he continually develops site-specific architectural installations and major public art commissions across Australia.
A full catalogue of available paintings, works on paper and limited-edition prints is available on request — enquire below.
Education: National Art School, East Sydney — Higher Art Certificate, 1984. · Download the full CV (PDF)
Matthew Johnson (b. 1963, London) is an Australian abstract painter based in Melbourne, best known for oil paintings of delicately blended circles of colour — luminous, pixel-like fields of light. He graduated from the National Art School, East Sydney, in 1984 and has exhibited since the late 1980s with galleries including Olsen Gallery (Sydney), FireWorks Gallery (Brisbane) and Christine Abrahams Gallery (Melbourne). He is not the British YBA painter Matthew Johnson, nor the American illustrator of the same name.
Yes. Matthew is the son of Michael Johnson (b. 1938), the senior Australian abstract colourist and 2014 Wynne Prize winner. His sister is the artist and writer Anna Johnson, and his wife is the artist Helga Groves. The family connection is documented, though Matthew's practice stands independently with its own four-decade exhibition history.
Original paintings, works on paper and limited-edition prints appear with Olsen Gallery in Sydney, FireWorks Gallery in Brisbane, Short St Gallery in Broome and selected dealers, and his work is regularly offered at auction through houses including Leonard Joel, Lawsons, Shapiro, Bonhams and Deutscher and Hackett. For current availability, contact the studio directly via the enquiry address below.
Collections include Artbank, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Monash University Museum of Art, La Trobe University Museum of Art, QUT Art Museum, the Moorilla (Mona) collection, Campbelltown City Art Gallery and the Holmes à Court Collection, alongside corporate collections such as Macquarie Bank, BHP and News Corporation, and private collections internationally.
Yes. Alongside studio painting he has a long record of site-specific architectural and public art commissions — including the South Morang and Coolaroo Station artworks for the Victorian Department of Transport, the TAC Building in Geelong, and the Babylonian Frieze at MG Garage, Sydney. Architectural and private commissions can be discussed via the enquiry address below.
For available works, exhibition loans, architectural and public art commissions, or press enquiries, please get in touch. Matthew Johnson is represented by galleries in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
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