Artist Talk: Charlotte Johannesson in conversation with Lars Bang Larsen
This is an edited recording of a talk where exhibiting artist Charlotte Johannesson discusses her practice with curator and writer Lars Bang Larsen.
The pair discussed Charlotte's current exhibition which features works from the past 50 years alongside a body of new lace work. A self-taught artist, neither of Johannesson’s chosen artistic media, the loom and the computer, were part of fine-art discourses at the time she worked with them between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s. Her artistic attitude was further complicated by its dialogue with protest movements and countercultures, such as feminism, punk, and 1970s militancy.
This event starts with an introduction from our Chief Curator Nicole Yip, followed by a presentation by Larsen and conversation with Johannesson.
Charlotte Johannesson lives and works in Skanör, Sweden. Her practice involves working with both the craft technology of the loom and the digital technology of computer programming, exploring their formal and conceptual connections. Trained as a weaver, Johannesson began creating tapestries as art in the 1970s, work that often satirised mainstream politics. In 1978, funded by The National Swedish Board for Technology and Development, she established the Digital Theatre with her partner, Sture Johannesson, in Malmö, Sweden. As Scandinavia’s first digital arts laboratory, the Digital Theatre functioned as an independent platform for both research and artistic projects and has been described as one of the most advanced Apple systems of its time, consisting of seven computers, printers, monitors and synthesisers. From these early experiments across textile and technology, Johannesson’s practice has developed to encompass a range of media including: weaving, painting, digital print and digital slideshows. Across these media, Johannesson continues to challenge the conditions of image-making and to enhance the synchronicity between material and digital production.
Lars Bang Larsen is a writer, curator, and head of artistic research at AHC in Copenhagen. Together with Mats Stjernstedt he curated Take Me to Another World at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid in 2021, the first retrospective of Charlotte Johannesson’s work.