Curriculum Vitae
Joanna McCormick
Email : joanna.mccormick@googlemail.com
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Joanna McCormick is an interdisciplinary artist who has exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad. She has worked as artist in residence for organisations such as Westminster Arts, The Holly Lodge Centre at The Royal Parks in Richmond and for the National Trust.
An award winning self employed artist based in South East London. A BA in Fine Art and
experience of working with art groups such as Chutney Preserves, Kindle and Surgery Projects, and with public bodies such as The Fashion & Textile Museum, The Royal Academy of Arts and The Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.
Joanna’s passion is painting. Having been given her first set of oil paints at he age of 12, she fell in love with the medium and its expressive force. All her work therefore displays an element of painting. This is expressed in various ways – in her three dimensional sculptural works Joanna uses paint as a finish, and in her live art and performance work she creates elaborate costumes, including masks ansd head pieces which are decorated using oil or acrylic paint.
She has shown work at various venues across the UK and abroad, The Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, The Fashion and Textile Museum, Westminster Reference Library and Cass Art’s art spaces throughout London. Joanna is a regular contributor to artist and curator Vanya Balogh's projects – currently exhibiting with Empire II at the 57th Venice Biennale. Joanna has also devised and delivered many live art interactions. For example, with Sarah Sparkes for Chutney Preserves and Frog Morris for The Royal Academy of Arts.
Joanna paints and draws in oils, watercolour, pastel, pen, pencil and charcoal. She also takes photographs and film footage that is often obscure and abstract, examining the structures and colours of the world around us and drawing attention to minutiae and the luscious beauty that can be found within the everyday. Joanna uses vibrant colours and a broad range of painterly techniques. From free scumbling translucent brushwork, to intensely fine lined detail drawn in paint onto flat colours across the surface, and stencilling using hand made stencils. Her work is quintessentially English, with a strong inspiration from art history and other cultures across the world, in particular Japan.
Joanna's work snatches inspiration from retro imagery and texts from poetry and song lyrics. Victorian scrap books and medieval chap books, wallpaper and textile designs. William Morris and Sanderson. Old photographs, such as those found in "We are the people" - Tom Phillips' exhibition of postcards at the V&A, and botanical illustrations, such as those by Maria Sybilla Merian – found in The Royal Collection, London. Weaving historical and political narratives into a wonderland fairytale world, that viewers are encouraged to freely interpret, and create their own story from.
Joanna teaches art classes at The Thomas Calton Centre in Peckham, for Southwark Adult Learning. She runs “Shrine to the Seasons”, a regular art project at The Union Chapel in Islington. This is a mini residency comprising a series of collaborative art outreach drop in sessions, where people gather together to make art to be developed into a contemporary icon installation for display at the chapel. Sessions take place every second Wednesday of the month, from 11am. More info on Jo and her art can be found at: www.joart.info.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
“By The Sea” Gallery 64 Whitstable curated by Harry Pie Sept 2017
“Common and Garden” Cafe Gallery Projects Southwark Aug 2017
“Empire II, Age of Anxiety” Venice Biennale May – Nov 2017
“Floral Anthology” Westminster Reference Library March 2017
“51% Remember Her” Tower Gallery East London March 2017
“Chinese Open Year of the Rooster” Q Park Jan 2017
“Neon P’ings” Cass Art Space Islington London Feb 2017
“Big Deal 7 Space 2016” Q Park London WC2 Nov 2016
“Under the Sea" Cass Arts Kinston Upon Thames Sept 2016
“Moon Moon Sing Sing” Bermondsey Folk Festival Sept 2016
"Snake Cake" Art in the Garden Milton's Cottage Museum July 2016
"Camberwell Beauty" Camberwell Society's Open Gardens June 2016
"Singing Mermaid" Bermondsey Blue Market June 2016
"Singing Mermaid" Search Party Sing London Kings Cross March 2016
"Pollock Family Painting" Private Commission March 2016
"Trash Tree" Camberwell Library for Camberwell Arts Dec 2015
"Literary Ping! Pong" Ping! London / Deptford X Deptford Library Sept 2015
"Moon Shrine, Erzulie" & "Moontime Wolverine & The Host Ghost" Fall of the Rebel Angels Venice Biennale 2015
"sLight" Chinese Open Q Park Soho Feb 2015
"Blindsided" live art interaction We Could Not Agree Oct 2014.
"Nun'sHead" Nunhead Open 10 for Surgery Projects Sept 2014
"Exploratory Works" in response to Union Chapel Open House weekend Sept 2014
"Cake Smash" Big Deal Marvellous Mix- Ups X1 Loud and Western July 2014
"Love/Hate RAte" The Royal Academy Midsummer Night's Fete June 2014
"20/20" Camberwell Arts Festival June 2014
"SweetTalking" Dulwich Festival Launch Party May 2014
"Singing Ghost" Camberwell Free Film Festival March 2014
"Moontime Sing Sing" Chinese Open Q Park, Soho Feb 2014
"SweetTalking" Peckham Platform Dec 2013
"Nippy Maid" Appetite Festival Nunhead, Sept 2013
"Chutney Preserves" Supernormal Festival Aug 2013
"Kiss Me Quick" Camberwell Arts Festival June 2013
"Kiss Me Quick" Peckham Platform Dec 2012
Artist Talk at Arts of Wellbeing symposium The Cockpit London Nov 2012
"Singing Ghost" Westminster Reference Library Oct 2012
"Olympic Confection Sculptures" Pass the Flame Connect the World SW1 Gallery July 2012
"Conversation Drawings" Alternative Arts' Wise Words festival March 2012
"Singing Ghost" Elephant and Nun Festival Southwark Sept 2011
"Acoustic Sessions" SHIFT. Angus Hughes Gallery Aug 2011
"The Haunted Sea" Folkesone Triennial Sept 2011
"About Peckham Number one, with Lanternier" Peckham Platform Feb 2011
"The Surrealist Tea Party" The Last Days of Decadance Aug & Sept 2010
"The Chelsea Paintings" Fashion and Textile Museum London May & June 2010
"Plagiarise" Bussey Building Peckham June 2009
"Fairy Cakes" Frog on the Green Nunhead Oct 2008
"Snippets and Suchlike" The Old Nun's Head Oct 2007
"Pink Collar" The Surgery Nunhead 2007
"Salon Art" Hair Disciples Richmond Jan 2007
"The Surgery Red Christmas" Nunhead 2006
"Paintings @ Number 22" Herne Hill July 2006
"Response" The Surgery Nunhead June & July 2006
"Zoological" Knapp Gallery Regents Park Oct 2005
"Friday 13th, Made in France" The Surgery May 2005
"Surgery Invited" Nunhead March 2005
"Vol de Blagnac" France Aug 2004
"Flight" Kindle Toulouse France July 2004
"Emerge" Kindle Hoxton Dec 2003
"Moda Outsized" MoDA Museum Middlesex April to Aug 2003
"The Serum Show" The Surgery London Feb & March 2003
"Fungus Mungos" Polesden Lacey for The National Trust Oct 2003
"Wildlife Document" Dorking June 2002
"Daisy, Ivy" Tricycle Gallery Kilburn April 2000
"Botanical Biographies" Speck London 1996
"Hidden Histories" Ikon Birmingham 1995
"Making Waves" Visionfest Liverpool Museums 1993
