Anthony Johnson was born in Sydney (1974), where he studied at the National Art School (1993-95), and the College of Fine Art (1997-98). Since 2000 he has resided predominately in Hobart, Australia.
His practice activates a complex and humorous engagement with the everyday, while often poking at seminal works and anecdotes pertaining to the legacy of early conceptual art.
The work is at times a spatial and self-referential response to site and context, drawing on nuances of a given exhibition and the space it occupies. He engages a breadth of different media, utilising performance, photography, video and sculpture to bring into question his implicated role as artist/protagonist, relative to materiality and context.
Anthony received New Work grants from the Australia Council in both 2004 and 2013, and was the recipient of an Australia Council funded studio residency in Los Angeles (2009). In 2011 he was awarded a Qantas Foundation Contemporary Art Award, and won the 2013 25th City of Hobart Art Prize. In 2012 Johnson participated in an international program at SOMA in Mexico City and completed an MFA at the University of Tasmania in 2013.
He has an extensive exhibition history at artist-run initiatives, contemporary art spaces and museums mostly throughout Australia. Having not exhibited in Sydney since 2013 (Sydney Contemporary 13), and 2007 (Primavera) before that, Anthony will draw on works from the past several years to exhibit alongside new works being developed for Firstdraft this April.
