Jess Johnson Order out of chaos (detail) 2013. Pen, copic markers, metallic paint on paper. Courtesy of Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney; and Utopian Slumps, Melbourne
Jess Johnson Order out of chaos (detail) 2013. Pen, copic markers, metallic paint on paper. Courtesy of Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney; and Utopian Slumps, Melbourne
This exhibition is now closed
New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based artist Jess Johnson makes intricate drawings and painted environments that evoke other worlds and parallel realities.
New Zealand born but now based in Melbourne, where she established the well-known Hell Gallery, Jess Johnson uses ink, Copic markers and collage to evoke other worlds, future realms and parallel realities. In Wurm Whorl Narthex, Johnson presents eleven intricate new works on paper, inspired, as she has said, by 'exceptionally unique worldviews and belief systems'. She also extends her elaborate patterns and arcane images across the walls of the gallery itself – as if the universe within each work has flowed beyond the frame and begun colonising the world beyond, 'adding to the gravitational pull of their fiction'.
Installed in April 2013 as part of Populate! – Christchurch Art Gallery's tenth-birthday programme of art around the city.
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Date:
10 May – 23 June 2013 -
Location:
209 Tuam Street -
Exhibition number:
947 -
Part of
Collection works in this exhibition
Related reading: Outer Spaces
Exhibition
Jess Johnson and Simon Ward: Genetekker Archaic
14 November 2018 – 7 February 2022
A collaboration based on an old-school video game.
Exhibition
Populate!
From 10 May
Christchurch Art Gallery celebrates its tenth birthday with a burst of art in the city – including whopping new murals, night-time projections and sculptures where you least expect them.
Artist Profile
Wurms Rule
As I write this I’m listening to Grimes. Jess Johnson likes Grimes. It’s the kind of music you might hear playing in her studio as she sits creating her complex drawings of alternate realities, line by meticulous line. A quiet achiever with numerous accomplishments under her belt, Johnson’s work ends up in all sorts of places – from the walls of Australia and New Zealand’s major institutions to the backs of some of pop culture’s coolest figures. Back in 2016 she collaborated with Australian fashion designers Romance Was Born on a range of clothes, some of which ended up being worn by Grimes herself. Not that you’d necessarily hear about this from Johnson, who is remarkably modest.
Notes
Human Beans Rejoice!
Fantastic to hear that Jess Johnson has won Australia's 2014 National Works on Paper Prize.
Notes
Jess Johnson interview
After the installation of Jess Johnson's latest exhibition Wurm Whorl Narthex at 209 Tuam Street, Justin Paton caught up with Jess for a talk about her practice, the exhibition, Hell, and where she's off to next.
Notes
Populate! update #24 (Masking tape monster)
The joys of working with a lot of masking tape? Getting to make a masking tape monster.
Notes
Populate! update #17 (How to make a narthex)
Saturday afternoon at Christchurch Art Gallery's 209 Tuam Street outpost and Jess Johnson's Wurm Whorl Narthex is on the grow. Only two days into a six-day install, the hand-painted backdrop is already a treat for the eyes, with green (not red) tape masking the walls in readiness for the next layer of colour. Views from the installation in progress (with the Gallery's Scott Jackson in the last photo)...
Notes
Populate! update #5 (back to the drawing board)
Today the Populate! tenth-birthday sneak-preview cam takes us to 200 Gertrude Street in Melbourne and the studio of New Zealand-born and now Melbourne-based Jess Johnson, well known as a force behind the maverick outfit Hell Gallery and now, as you can see, thoroughly busy making art of her own.
Notes
Holloway Press 1994-2014
Last chance to view the Holloway Press exhibition at Central Library Peterborough this week so if you are in the neighbourhood and like beautifully printed, designed and hand-crafted books then make sure you head along.
Notes
Sian Torrington Call Out
Christchurch Art Gallery is excited to be working with Wellington-based artist Sian Torrington on a site-specific sculptural installation that will combine ideas, images and materials that relate to living in Christchurch now.
See below for a message from Sian to find out how you can get involved.
Notes
Outer Space programme sees Canterbury arts graduate exhibit work in Showhome
The Gallery's latest exhibition in the Outer Spaces programme, Showhome, has opened in Christchurch, featuring the disconcertingly 'perfect' works of recent University of Canterbury graduate Emily Hartley-Skudder.
Notes
Worcester Boulevard exhibition extended as publication developed
The popularity of Reconstruction: Conversations on a City has led to the exhibition being extended until 14 October, and the development of a publication.
Notes
The inner binding now on display at the library
If you've not been down to the Central Library Peterborough yet now's a good time to do it.
Notes
(Way Out)er Spaces
We're pretty pleased with what we're achieving with our Outer Spaces programme, but it's always good to see what else is out there. And I do mean 'out there'...
Notes
The ghost of studios past
In preparation for the next issue of Bulletin, Gallery photographer John and I have been out photographing some of the local artists who will be taking part in Rolling Maul when we reopen.
Interview
Silent Patterns
When we asked Tony de Lautour to produce a new work for the Bunker—the name Gallery staff give to the small, square elevator building at the front of the forecourt on Montreal Street—he proposed a paint scheme inspired by Dazzle camouflage. Associated with the geometric near-abstraction of the vorticist movement, Dazzle was developed by British and American artists during the First World War to disguise shipping. It was a monumental form of camouflage that aimed not to hide the ship but to break up its mass visually and confuse enemies about its speed and direction. In a time before radar and sonar were developed, Dazzle was designed to disorientate German U-boat commanders looking through their periscopes, and protect the merchant fleets.
Senior curator Lara Strongman spoke with Tony de Lautour in late January 2016.
Article
Sparks that fly upwards
Curator Felicity Milburn remembers five years and 101 installations in a gallery without walls.
My Favourite
Peter Stichbury's NDE
Anna Worthington chooses her favourite work from the Gallery collection.