Claudette Johnson RA Elect (b. 1959)

Claudette Johnson MBE (b. 1959, Manchester, UK) lives and works in London. Johnson started her career as part of the newly formed BLK Art Group, which she joined in 1981 while a student at Wolverhampton University. In the 1980s Johnson showed her work in a number of significant exhibitions including Five Black Women, Africa Centre, London (1983); Black Women Time Now, Battersea Arts Centre, London (1984); The Thin Black Line, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1985) and In This Skin: Drawings by Claudette Johnson, Black Art Gallery, London (1992). In 2022, Johnson was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Arts by Wolverhampton University, and in 2024, a City Lit Fellowship.

Johnson’s notable activities in 2024 include a solo presentation at The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, and a mural commission at Brixton station with Art on the Underground, as well as being included in the group exhibitions The Time of Our Lives, Drawing Room, London; The Time is Always Now, National Portrait Gallery, London; and Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, Arnolfini, Bristol, a Hayward Gallery Touring Exhibition. Recent solo exhibitions include Presence, The Courtauld Gallery, London; Drawn Out, Ortuzar Projects, New York (both 2023); Still Here, Hollybush Gardens, London (2021); Claudette Johnson: I Came to Dance, Modern Art Oxford (2019); Hollybush Gardens, London (2017). She has participated in numerous group exhibitions including: Women in Revolt!, Tate Britain, London; A Tall Order!: Rochdale Art Gallery in the 1980s, Touchstones Gallery, Rochdale (both 2023); Rock My Soul II (Stockholm), Galleri Futura, Stockholm; Courtauld Connections: Works from our National Partners, The Project Space, The Courtauld Gallery, London; Drawing Closer, RISD Museum, Rhode Island; On Love, HOME, London; Me, Myself and I: Artists’ Self-Portraits, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol (all 2022); Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 50s — Now, Tate Britain, London; Coventry Biennial 2021: HYPER-POSSIBLE, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry; Bodies in Space, MIRROR, Plymouth College of Art, Plymouth; From Hockney to Himid: Sixty Years of British Printmaking, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; Am I Asking for Miracles Here?, The House of St. Barnabas, London; Landscape Portrait: Now and Then, Hestercombe Gallery, Somerset (all 2021); Close: Drawn Portraits, The Drawing Room, London (2018); The Place Is Here, South London Gallery and Nottingham Contemporary, UK (both 2017); No Colour Bar: Black British Art in Action 1960-1990, Guildhall Art Gallery, London (2015-16); and Thin Black Line(s), Tate Britain, London (2012).

Johnson’s work is held in numerous public collections, including Tate, London, UK; The Courtauld Gallery, UK; British Council, UK; Arts Council England, UK; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK; Manchester Art Gallery, UK; Wolverhampton Art Gallery, UK; Rugby Museum, UK; Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, UK; Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE, and Baltimore Museum of Art, USA.