Natasha Johns-Messenger facts for kids
Natasha Johns-Messenger, born in 1970, is an Australian artist and filmmaker. She is known for creating amazing art installations that play with how we see space and light. Her art often uses tricks and illusions, sometimes by changing buildings or using clever optical effects.
Natasha's work includes photography, digital painting, and sculptures. She has lived and worked in both New York and Melbourne.
Contents
About Natasha's Family
Natasha Johns-Messenger comes from a family of talented people. Her great-grandfather was Dally Messenger, a famous Australian rugby player. Her sister, Julia Messenger, is a singer.
Natasha's mother, Catherine Marie Johns, is a poet and writer. Her father, Dally Messenger III, is also an author. He is known for his work with the Australian civil celebrant movement.
Natasha's Art Career
Natasha Johns-Messenger uses ideas from architecture, film, and visual arts to create new kinds of sculptures. She often makes large art installations. These installations change how you experience a space.
She uses things like special mirrors (periscopes), live video, and clever copies of building parts. Her art explores how light and space work together. Natasha is also interested in quantum physics, math, and shapes in her art.
How She Started
Natasha became interested in changing "ways of seeing" when she was a child. She spent many days drawing and photographing shapes from everyday objects. This helped her think about how we look at things.
She started her art journey as a painter. In 1994, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Later, in 2000, she completed her Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT).
Natasha has shown her art in many important places. These include the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne.
Moving into Film
In 2012, Natasha earned another MFA, this time in Film, from Columbia University in New York. This was a big change for her. She started combining her interest in abstract art with moving pictures.
Her final film at Columbia, called Blackwood, won many awards. It won the Alumni Award for Best Film and the Best Director Award. Blackwood was shown at the Warsaw Film Festival and over 40 other film festivals.
Her next film, Off-Ramp, also won awards. It was named Best Student Film and Best Actress at the Los Angeles International Underground Film Festival.
Exhibitions and Awards
Natasha Johns-Messenger's art has been shown in international group exhibitions. She has exhibited alongside famous artists like Dan Graham and James Turrell.
In 2009 and 2010, she was asked by the New York Public Art Fund to create her work ThisSideIn. She also made Recollection for No Longer Empty in New York.
Major Awards
In 2007, Natasha won the Den Haag Sculptuur Rabo Bank Prize. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands presented this award to her.
In 2005, she won the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture. She won it with her group OSW (Open Spatial Workshop) for their sculpture groundings.
Other Exhibitions
Some of her other exhibitions include:
- Yellow, 2011, at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Melbourne.
- Through to You, at "Freedom-American Sculpture" in The Hague, The Netherlands.
- Of Water, 2008, at the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in Brisbane.
- Installations at the ISCP in New York and the Escher Museum in The Netherlands.
In 2020, the Adelaide//International exhibition at the Samstag Museum featured her work. She collaborated with John Wardle Architects on an installation called Somewhere Other. This artwork was also Australia's entry in the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. The exhibition had to close early because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.
