Helen Johnson

Art on the Underground present Things Held Fast, a new large-scale public commission at Brixton Underground station by Australian artist Helen Johnson. For her first major public commission, Johnson represents Brixton through the lens of a community garden – a shared space of growth that builds over time due to collective commitment.

For her new commission, Things Held Fast, Johnson depicts a group of figures gardening, absorbed in their tasks and conversation and connected by the investment of their shared energies in a communal space. Much of the painting’s imagery is drawn from the Lambeth Archives, which provided insight into organisations, projects and movements that underlie the community at the heart of Brixton. For example, the owl depicted is taken from a protest banner to save Lambeth libraries, children are shown climbing a cherry blossom tree, referencing the Cherry Tree childcare centre that was closed amidst much local protest, and the whirligig beetle and pondlife depicted can all be found in nearby Myatt’s Fields. The painting’s vignettes are signifiers of history, growing and interconnected like plants in the soil. They are represented in fragments and details, but tell the stories of community organisations and movements such as the Lambeth Women’s Project; anti-racist organisations like Unity Centre; gardening groups like the one at Myatt’s Fields Park; or the movement to save local libraries.

Johnson’s commission also explores a common theme in the artist’s practice, the construction of national identity and the legacies of colonisation. Embedded in the layered surface of Things Held Fast, is an image derived from Robert Dodd’s engraving Mutiny on the Bounty (1790), which depicts mutineers ejecting Vice-Admiral William Bligh from his ship. The mutiny took place on a journey to transplant breadfruit trees from Tahiti to the Caribbean as a food source for the enslaved people who were there under British colonial rule. Subsequently, William Bligh was appointed as Governor to the British colony of New South Wales, where he oversaw the dispossession of indigenous peoples and unspeakable violence towards them. Bligh, a resident of Lambeth between 1754-1817, became a negative connection for the artist to Brixton. As a white artist living in Australia, Johnson wanted to acknowledge this colonial history and represent the opposing trajectories of Bligh, who travelled to the Caribbean for purposes of subjugation and dispossession; and the African and Caribbean communities who many years later established themselves in the UK, where, up against hostility and socio-economic inequalities, they continued to foster solidarity and cultivate strong communities.

Research for Things Held Fast began in late 2019 at a moment when Australia was ravaged by one of the worst bushfires in its history. For Johnson, the loss caused by the fires gave rise to appreciation of what remained and what is valuable. The commission was painted in Melbourne, in lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic; this second challenging context served as a reminder to the artist that community is vital for our sense of collective purpose and wellbeing.

Things Held Fast represents multiple stories, densely layered, that will reveal themselves gradually over time. It does not take a single history or movement as its subject, but rather is a vehicle for thinking about how a multitude of narratives can lay the foundation for something greater.