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Julie Johnstone is an artist, curator and publisher working primarily in the book form. She is based in Edinburgh and her work is held in many collections. For this exhibition at UWE Bristol she has developed a new body of work responding to the painter Agnes Martin.

I have long been drawn to the work and persona of the painter Agnes Martin (1912-2004). My normal practice is to work without an external ‘subject matter’, creating neutral works that allow the reader to bring their own context. The works explore perception, distillation, and contemplative experience. On technical level I often use small shifts in tints of colour, keeping strictly to the basic four colours of the CMYK model. I work with minimal texts or simple visuals, and in many forms, from cards, badges, small booklets, poem-objects, installations and larger book forms.

For this project I decided to address my interest in Agnes Martin directly, conducting extensive research to see the body of work that might result when details of her life and work ‘met’ my own practice and preoccupations. I was interested in that meeting place and how one might be directly or indirectly inspired by subject matter, how oblique that connection might be. I also wanted to unravel the mystery of ‘influence’. I was interested in asking what it was that draws us to a particular painter, or work of art. The apparent affinity or resonance one feels. How does that relate to our own lives, and what does it say about us as individuals or as artists.

Why, I wanted to ask, does standing in front of an Agnes Martin painting overwhelm me? Some sort of relief, recognition, ‘a long exhale’ as one critic put it? The paintings are deceptively simple and superficially do not lead one to expect an emotional response. But her ‘simple’ lines are somehow about beauty, happiness, perfection, and they can trigger a deeper awareness that we carry within us.

Perhaps the works I have made so far are just a first stage of this project. It feels like that. That I am circling her, my subject. Inching in. Trying responses in different forms, different modes. Exploring resonances, letting the connections be as strange, tangential, and as personal as I like. Being sparked by the smallest of things.

There are many individual pieces in the exhibition – rather than just create a single work in response, part of my practice is to create an ongoing project of works, with each piece contributing to a whole.

Some of the works play with the titles she gave paintings and drawings, others respond to things she wrote or that critics wrote about her, to stories people told about her, others to broader aspects of her life and practice, and others respond to the paintings themselves, the grids, the horizontals, and lines.

The exhibition will also be the first showing of a collaborative artists’ book On a Clear Day with the poet Jane Duran, who has previously written a sequence of poems on Agnes Martin. The book will combine a poem by Jane Duran with artwork and design by Julie Johnstone.

All of the works can be also be viewed or purchased on a dedicated webpage. Julie Johnstone can also be found on Instagram: @essencepress

The exhibition includes the following new works, and more:

two pencils for Agnes Martin, Julie Johnstone, 2023
A playful work for an artist who made remarkable use of the humble pencil.

perceiving is receiving is responding is, Julie Johnstone, 2023
Mobius loop, adapted from a line from the writings of Agnes Martin

happiness, Julie Johnstone, 2023
Horizontal book printed in 50% yellow, with yellow thread.

flowers, Julie Johnstone, 2023
Small concertina using the titles of four paintings by Agnes Martin, printed in CMYK.

devotion, Julie Johnstone, 2023
12 section sewn double-sided concertina with a sequence using the titles of Agnes Martin paintings on one side, and fragments extracted from her writings on the other.

the rose, Julie Johnstone, 2023
Horizontal book printed in 50% magenta and with pink thread exploring a story told about Agnes Martin.

following the line, Julie Johnstone, 2023
12 section sewn double-sided concertina with horizontal line pieces on one side and intersecting line pieces on the other.

following the line [scroll], Julie Johnstone, 2023
Scroll with the continuous text unfurling: following the line the line the line…

Julie Johnstone has curated a complementary display of items from the Library collection, Space, Line, Colour which is on show in the side cabinets until the end of June 2023. The list of works can be downloaded here.

Julie took part in a public conversation and Q&A with independent artists’ books specialist / curator Maria White in the library’s special collections area on Thursday 20th April 2023.

This exhibition is open to the public Monday – Friday 9am-5pm. No booking needed. The library is on the first floor of B block.

For more information on Bower Ashton Library, visitor access and campus map, see the library website. You can also follow the library’s Twitter feed.

UWE Bristol, City Campus at Bower Ashton, Kennel Lodge Road, Bristol BS3 2JT.