Helen Johnson

Helen Johnson is a Naarm (Melbourne-based) artist known for her large-scale figurative paintings. Her works often critically examine colonial histories, power structures, and cultural and social narratives using layered imagery, text, and symbolic motifs that invite viewers to question Australia’s past and its ongoing impact.

Leapyear Ladies Pop is a large‑scale painting made up of both textured and flat painted areas. These layered surfaces make it difficult to distinguish between foreground and background, blurring the boundaries between abstraction and figuration. This visual uncertainty encourages viewers to look closely and consider how meaning is constructed within the image.

The work draws on a nineteenth‑century cartoon originally published in an 1876 police gazette circulated in the colony of Port Phillip. The cartoon references the leap‑year tradition that permits women to propose to men on 29 February. While this custom may initially appear progressive, Helen Johnson challenges this assumption, suggesting that the image presents a temporary inversion that ultimately reinforces existing power structures. By linking the tradition to systems governed by the calendar, law enforcement and colonial authority, Johnson highlights how control and inequality are maintained rather than disrupted.

Since becoming an art therapist in 2024, Johnson’s practice has shifted towards a more intuitive and open‑ended mode of painting. Rather than offering fixed interpretations, her works invite viewers to ask questions and reflect on their own readings. In paintings such as Those visions are true and Visit over, madam (both 2024), hands appear alongside speech bubbles and other visual elements without clear narrative explanation. These ambiguous relationships encourage viewers to consider how gestures, symbols and fragments of imagery can communicate meaning without providing definitive answers.

Helen Johnson, Visit over, madam, 2024, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 86.36 × 60.96 cm; photo: Farzad Owrang.

In the work Visit over, madam, 2024, the connection suggested by two clasped hands is complicated by the text bubble of the cartoon-like figure in the foreground – and their fatigued refrain ‘I thought I wanted everything’. The painting generates its meaning from these concurrent and contrasting states.
Maria Zagala on Helen Johnson
  • Colonial Histories: Johnson interrogates Australia’s colonial past and its representation in art and culture.
  • Power and Identity: Her paintings explore systems of authority and their influence on identity formation.
  • Layering and Transparency: Overlapping figures and text suggest complexity and contested narratives.
  • Audience Engagement: Works encourage critical reflection on historical and contemporary issues
  • What role does layering technique play in Johnson's paintings?
  • How do Johnson’s works challenge traditional representations of Australian history?
  • Find three other examples in AGSA’s collection that contribute to conversations about national identity, power structures or social narratives.
    • Discuss how these works are similar or different to that of Johnson’s.
    • Research other work created by Johnson such as Invasive species 2016 and Fat land owners who received parcels of stolen land 2026 and select your favourite. Using the Civics and Citizenship concept wheel select three concepts that are evident in this work and explain how.
    • In the Tate Modern video Johnson states ‘Australia is a place with rotten foundations”. What do you think she means by this?
  • Create a painting combining text and imagery that explores a social or historical theme or event that has made an impression on you.
  • Use archival images and personal photographs to construct a layered work of art about your own identity.
  • As a class brainstorm traditions that you are familiar with. For example wearing a school uniform or brides wearing white to their wedding etc. Vote on a tradition that still exists today that may either be considered outdated by some people or one you think should remain. Create a large-scale drawing or painting that encourages participants to physically engage with the work and that challenges or supports the validity of this tradition continuing.