Artists, ethnographer, designer, photographer, strategist

Freelance photographer Liz Johnson Arthur has worked for everyone from Sunday Times, Observer magazine, ID, Dazed & Confused, the Face, Fader magazine. Toured with M.I.A, Blur, Seun Kuti and Lady Gaga to name a few, and during all this time her Black Balloon Archive has been growing and growing - with no end in sight.

I am an artist and graphic designer. After working for over ten years for institutions in the culture and art sector such as the Barbican Centre and the Institute of Contemporary Arts and then the leading arts publisher Phaidon, I set up my design and art studio in 2015. I split my time between design commissions and producing my own artists books.

I have been working in the art world for the past eight years. An advocate for artists since a young age, I managed my first art gallery in Los Angeles at age 23 and finally created my current business, MTArt Agency, to promote the artists she believed in across the globe. MTArt is the first artist agency in the world, the agency specialises in talent management: building, growing and accelerating careers while financing the studio costs of its artists. 

I was born in the mid 1980's and grow up in London. From always having a fascination with mechanical objects and relentlessly playing with lego as a child becoming a still life photographer seemed like a natural progression. There is something enormously rewarding about creating exactly whats in your head. I try and make my images on first glance look completely perfect but on closer inspection its revealed there are many imperfections, if you look closer at the 'Wrapping Paper Series' you can see all the joins and creases. I think this makes it look and feel like a photograph and not CGI.