Journey is a sculptural artwork, featuring over 3000 train tickets – each one representing a journey, a person and a story. Sewn together, they become a larger statement exploring ideas of connection, belonging and humanity.
From January to July 2024, Beth collected train tickets from across the UK and spent several days working at Middlesbrough railway station, engaging with staff and station users. She gathered tickets from many travellers passing through the station, striking up conversations about their journeys and discovering what brought them to Middlesbrough from across the world. The coloured threads used to bind the tickets together recall the old Edmondson railway tickets, which came in a number of different colours and were used on the rail system until the mid 1980s.
Beth Johnson’s art practice predominantly centres around embroidery. Current lines of enquiry combine this as part of new expressive mixed media artworks incorporating the artform, which tell stories of connecting people and their interaction with a sense of place.
Her background and formal training in Architectural Studies influences the structure and form of her work. In Journey, this can be seen through the orientation and repetition of patterns and features which reference the fabric of the station.