Johnston began her career rooted in functional pottery, creating tableware that emphasized usability and clarity of form. However, she soon found herself drawn to experimentation, cutting, layering, altering forms, and incorporating transfers to push clay beyond traditional functional boundaries. These early explorations marked the beginning of her interest in how ceramics can inhabit a space between utility and sculpture, inviting viewers to reconsider the relationship between object, purpose, and aesthetic expression.
Her travels throughout Europe significantly influenced her artistic development. Encounters with Italian majolica, Baroque ornament, Gothic and Renaissance architecture, and the organic curves of Art Nouveau helped shape her interest in elaborate surface treatments and lush decorative elements. This led to a series of highly embellished works that incorporated sculpted flowers, clay straps, and intricate motifs. Her solo exhibition Scavenging for Beauty marked a major turning point, showcasing a body of work that integrated unconventional materials (scrap metal, copper, silk, plastic, and found objects) into ceramic forms. Through this mixture of materials, Johnston examined themes of beauty and the contrast of abundant historical decoration to a modern world where the value of ornamentation is lost to utility and efficiency in design.
In recent years, Johnston has shifted her focus to a new narrative: the relationship between humans and wildlife amid climate change, deforestation, and urban expansion. Imagining a world where animals adapt by using human-made tools, her new vessels present scenes in which wildlife reclaims agency in disrupted environments. The work is both a critique of ecological degradation yet is a playful gesture toward reciprocity and coexistence..
Johnston participated in a three-month residency in Jingdezhen, China, an international centre for porcelain production during the last months of 2025. There, she explored large, translucent sculptural flowers that reflect on aging as a process of transformation rather than decline. These works examined fragility, impermanence, and the shifting forms of beauty that emerge over time.
Her practice remains deeply informed by curiosity, experimentation, and a desire to use clay as both metaphor and material. Whether through functional pieces or elaborate sculptural assemblages, Johnston’s work captures a sense of movement, narrative, and emotional depth.
Within The Power of Objects, Johnston’s pieces illuminate how crafted forms can hold speculative and ecological storytelling. Her work acts as imaginative propositions; objects that consider the agency of animals, the consequences of human impact, and the layered beauty found in both decay and regeneration. Through her innovative approach to form and material, Johnston embodies the idea that objects can challenge, provoke, and reimagine the worlds we inhabit.
