Johnson’s series is a continuation of Oddment Batch, whose compositions are drawn from offcuts. The fabric remnants are collected from tailors and clothing designers. One batch was kept aside by a Senegalese tailor who worked in the artist’s neighbourhood: “Bara made custom ceremonial clothing, spending hours with clients selecting fabrics and finalising fits to create garments intended to mark moments in time.” Johnson is compelled by the quiet expression of a practiced hand – the quick, sharp gestures of scissors on cloth. The awkward remainders call up the curve of a neck here, the widening of a hip there. They are traces of an intimate engagement between bodies and cloth.

In time, a garment will lead its own life, moving away from its original role and perhaps outliving its wearer. The narratives it holds will be forgotten or retained as fragments, frayed at the edges.

Johnson’s paintings have a provisional quality, the oil sometimes tentative, sometimes sure on the canvas. The medium is made tactile and porous, bodily. But the body or object – collar, cuff, skirt – is missing. What remains is an amalgamation of odds. “There is no final form. It is now adrift without purpose or construction – ineffable in form and metaphorical in meaning.” — Chloë Reid for Nuweland Gallery