Johanna Rotko is a Finnish, visual artist renowned for her ‘living portraits’, otherwise known as yeastograms.

Johanna works with living materials, primarily yeasts, cultivated on agar in Petri dishes. She exposes these cultures to UV radiation through a photographic mask, allowing serendipitous contamination by other microbial species without intervention. As the bioart develops, she photographs the process, delighting in the emerging diversity and beauty.

Armed with a Master of Arts degree from Aalto University’s School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Johanna has showcased her work globally, with notable exhibitions at the Science Gallery Dublin, Oulu Art Museum, and the Tokyo Spiral Hall.

Johanna is an active member of the Finnish art community and a prominent figure in the Bioart Society, engaging in collaborative projects and art education initiatives. 2024 celebrates Johanna’s 10th year as a bioartist!

Singer Instruments are hoping that Johanna will eventually use Singer's ColonyCam imaging technology to photo her fantastic art.

Zoe Snape is a multi-disciplinary artist, exploring all mediums to examine her interest in the mental health implications of the Climate Emergency. Transience is the theme of her art. Stimulating conversations about the nature of control, confinement, freedom, and flow, she asks the viewer to engage emotionally with her artwork, which aims to provoke inexpressible and challenging feelings, experiences or sensations. 

Her subject matter is bubbles, blowing and printing them to illustrate the power of breathing exercises to manage psychological states. More recently she has experimented with natural materials such as sea foam and bioart.

She works at her permanent studio at the East Quay art centre directly beside the sea in Watchet, Somerset, UK. A Somerset Art Works member and part of the artists collective HATCH, she has a BA (Hons) in Fine Art & Art History from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has exhibited in London, Sheffield and Somerset. Zoe is a specialist in fine art photography, with a fifteen-year-long career working in galleries and auction houses such as Christie's, Bloomsbury Auctions and The Photographers' Gallery, London.

Singer Instruments is overjoyed to host Zoe this year as their first ever artist in residence. A long-term dream-come-true for Harry Singer, CEO, who says, “Zoe and our science team are 

really pushing the boundaries of Singer Instruments’ technologies. And my sanity. Joke!”