Natasha Johns-Messenger

Natasha Johns-Messenger (born 1970) is an Australian conceptual artist and filmmaker, who has lived and worked in New York and Melbourne. She is best known for her large-scale site-determined installations that examine spatial perception and light. Her work is a process of imitation, illusion and trickery, often activated by architectural interventions and optical physics.

In 2007, she won the Den Haag Sculptuur Rabo Bank Prize presented to her by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, and in 2005 Johns-Messenger won the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture with her then collaborative group OSW Natasha Johns-Messenger, Automated Logic, NEW 06, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), 2006. Curated by Juliana Engbergthumb Natasha Johns-Messenger, Automated Logic, NEW 06, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), 2006. Curated by Juliana Engberg

Background Johns-Messenger is the great-granddaughter of Australian rugby legend Dally Messenger and sister of singer Julia Messenger. Johns-Messenger's mother, Catherine Marie Johns, is a poet and novelist. Her father, Dally Messenger III, is an author, noted for his general contribution to the Australian civil celebrant movement.

Career Johns-Messenger employs the principles of architecture, film and the visual arts to produce a new experiential sculptural framework. She creates representations or abstractions from the original architecture, using material devices such as, periscopic mirrors, live video projections and architectural mimicry to produce large-scale installations. Her interest in quantum physics, Johns-Messenger critically examines the role of the body in space. Her primary concern with altering ordinary "ways of seeing" began during early childhood, where she spent days sketching, conceptualising and photographing shapes from ordinary objects. and in 2000 she completed a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). She has exhibited at major institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces and the Contemporary Centre for Photography in Melbourne.

In 2012 Johns-Messenger completed an MFA in Film at Columbia University, New York, marking a shift into narrative film, where she combines her interest with abstraction and the moving image into real time. Blackwood, her final graduate film at Columbia, won numerous awards at the 2012 Columbia University Film Festival, including the Alumni Award for Best Film, National Board of Review Motion Pictures Award and the Adrienne Shelly Foundation Best Director Award. Blackwood went on to premiere at the Warsaw Film Festival and was featured in 40 film festivals and won numerous awards. Her first film after graduation, Off-Ramp, won Best Student Film and Best Actress at the Los Angeles International Underground Film Festival. Natasha Johns-Messenger, Automated Logic, NEW 06, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), 2006. Curated by Juliana Engberg

Exhibitions

Johns-Messenger has been curated into international group exhibitions alongside artists Dan Graham, James Turrell and Lawrence Weiner.

Other exhibitions include Yellow, 2011, at ACCA, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; Through to You, "Freedom-American Sculpture" The Hague (Den Haag), The Netherlands; Of Water, 2008, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane; ISCP Open Studio Exhibition, ISCP, New York and Trappenhuis (Stairwell) Installation, Den Haag Sculptuur, Escher Museum, Netherlands. Due to run from 28 February to 12 June, the exhibition was cut short by the closure of the Samstag in March 2020 owing to the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.