The New Devolpment Painting

Bettina John is a performance and installation artist with a diverse practice drawing on various media including drawing and painting, video and photography, performance art, installation and textile work. After having studied fashion design at german art school Burg Giebiechenstein, an art school with similar roots to the Bauhaus, she worked for a couple of years as a fashion designer in Berlin and London before deciding to open her career to a more interdisciplinary approach, very much in the Bauhaus tradition. She went on to study new media art at Goldsmiths University in 2008 and formed an art collective the same year. Goldsmiths reinforced her interdisciplinary way of working and instilled a critical stance to new media. As part of the collective Bettina John started exhibiting and performing. Whilst pursuing the life as a fine artist with travel bursaries taking her to New York in 2012 and Rio De Janeiro in 2013, she continued building a design portfolio, focusing on design for opera, contemporary dance and musicals. However her work as a designer and her work as an artist is inextricably linked and informs one another leading to interesting projects, often collaborations. Rather than focusing on the choice of the medium Bettina John's approach leads her from an idea to a medium, resulting in installations that can serve as a stage for her live performances. Bettina John is interested in the process, discovering and uncovering herself and social conditions. Her work resembles that of an anthropologist investigating the way we live now, particularly in regards to social media, technology and globalisation. These interests prompted her in 2012 to develop Alter Egos that help her uncovering a hedonist and narcissist, selfie world where it is as simple to reinvent yourself as pressing a few buttons and ticking a couple of boxes. The consequences can be bigger and effect real life rather than just our virtual avatar. With her Alter Egos she goes so far as to explore those consequences.