AMERICAN artist Sue Johnson will be showcasing her work at a new exhibition at Salisbury Museum.

Collecting Patterns will bring together a comprehensive selection of Johnson’s paintings, showing how she has been inspired by the manuscript catalogue of General Pitt-Rivers’ ‘second’ collection.

It also features new work that has been directly inspired by the museum’s Pitt-Rivers Wessex Collection which includes his archaeological excavations at Cranborne Chase.

Johnson's work is built on the artistic genres of still life, vanitas and memento mori, and aims to create a whole new way of looking at everyday and more unusual objects.

The Wessex Collection itself is soon to be featured in the new archaeology gallery opening at Salisbury Museum in late spring 2014. The new Wessex Gallery of Archaeology, funded by £1.8m from the Heritage Lottery Fund will tell the story of Salisbury and the surrounding area from prehistoric times to the Norman Conquest.

Salisbury Museum’s project curator Jane Ellis-Schön said: “As an archaeologist, it is wonderful to see how Sue has taken objects we are going to put on display, and translated these into paintings and patterns, which also link to the way General Pitt-Rivers catalogued his findings.”

One of the more unexpected outcomes has been Johnson’s creation of wallpaper patterns based on artefacts in the museum’s collection.

Johnson will be talking about her work followed by a tour of the exhibition on February 1.

Contact Salisbury Museum for details.

* Sue Johnson and General Pitt-Rivers – Collecting Patterns: The Curious Response of a 21st Century Artist to a 19th Century Collector runs from February 1 to May 10.