Amelia Johnstone MA RCA

e: ajohnstone@cardiffmet.ac.uk
t: 02920 411146
w: www.ameliajohnstone.com / www.illustrationresearch.com / www.illustrationcardiff.wordpress.com

image: from ‘Moon Landings’ summer diary

Specialist Subject Areas

Illustration, Illustration Research

Qualifications

PGCHE University of Gloucestershire

MA Communications Art and Design Royal College of Art

First Class Honours BA (Hons) Illustration Hereford College of Art & Design

Biography

I was born on 7th May 1977 at 12 O’ Clock midday in Chesterfield hospital in Derbyshire. As the fourth of six children I spent summers growing up in Dorset and Devon on rivers and in woods playing alone, or making up elaborate games with my siblings, or cousins or imaginary friends. Life was all about imagination then, and continues to be now.

Illustration has always been there, always been my discipline and as a child I used to carry my favourite illustrated books with me, go for picnic breakfasts and eat marmalade sandwiches out of illustrated tins and live life as though always in a story.

One of my earliest illustrated memories is ‘Struwwelpeter’ this book brought my nightmares to life, and is the reason I stopped sucking my thumb. It was in the bookshelf in the room I used to stay in, in my Grandmother’s house, and when the lights went out and the door stood a little ajar the scissor man would come…

… ‘The door flew open, in he ran, 
The great, long, red-legged scissorman…

’ In his fashion of white socks red trousers long nose and tousled hair he haunted me through those early years, imagining as soon as I put my thumb in to sleep that he would awaken from his book like state and come to life to chop off my thumbs. That illustration had the power to change me and it has even more significance in my work. ‘Shellewellyn’ my male alter ego was possibly conceived in these early years; sadly Shellewellyn’s victims may be left in an even more tragic state. 

My Grandmother was born in India at the end of the Raj, her stories of that place and reading novels by EM Forster and Frances Hodgson Burnett lead me to travel there in 2001 to explore that most important part of my imagination, the past. My Great Grandfather, affectionately known as Bear, shot a tiger which had eaten one of his servants and the head was placed in the stairwell at Granny’s house in Derbyshire, the story I was told, however, was that the tiger had jumped through the wall and that its body had become lodged there, it couldn’t be set free so the face was framed and the rest remained inside. That tiger, like the scissor man, came creeping into my room at night to eat me….and he again visited me in India in the Himalayas whilst others slept I felt his breath and heard his feet padding around our exposed tent.

The stories I was told as a child, the smells and memories of that existence, that part of my life, which continue to inspire and excite me, as well as provoke feeling of the happy melancholy. A feeling which helps me feel alive, and to live life.

My first dissertation ‘‘A long time ago when wishing still helped’ – Imagery, Imagination and Private Worlds’, describes how it is through the late night dreaming hours that ideas are born and identities grown. 

In 2004 I became part of an exciting illustration movement which culminated in the publication of Le Gun magazine. Le Gun describes me as ‘a spiritual descendant of the Bloomsbury Group with a male alter ego called Shellewellyn’ it explores even more of this other side, the place where demons, ideas and strange manifestations of another sort of reality, lurk, leap about, have fun and wreak havoc.

 I have exhibited in London in both solo and group shows and around the world with Le Gun.

I am currently exhibiting in London and Cardiff, and working on illustrated essays to bring the symposium papers for ‘Alchemy, Redolence and Enchantment’ together in a book with themes of obedience and disobedience, light and dark, now and then and lastly when. I continue to explore fairy tales, and growing as my Alice self, uncomfortable and constantly shifting perspective and to the champion the discipline and purpose of illustration and the importance and impact of images.

Current research

Following Shadow Play our first symposium, exploring the themes Alchemy, Redolence & Enchantment from 4th – 6th November 2010. I am currently exploring morality through religion and folklore in preparation for my PhD. An epiphany in the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow has finally aligned all my fascinations in a coherent way.

My interest in fairy tale, fable and growing at all stages through childhood teenage-hood adulthood to old age reflect on the notion of redolence, I believe in the human imaginer inspiring a better existence which sits quite firmly in folk. I delight in theatre, in books and paper, and am dismayed and worried about the widespread use of social networking, the internet, and the culture that I see consuming itself.

My current practice hopes to enable the periscoped perspective, within teaching and storytelling and through understanding the significance of interior monologue and illustration’s ventriloquistic abilities.

Principal Publications and/or Exhibitions

2010/2011

Close Eyes To Exit: Red Gallery Rivington Street London, 1st- 18th April 2011, Exhibition and publication

Make Room: Milkwood Gallery Cardiff, 12th – 24th April 2011

Falmouth Metamorphosis Illustration Forum, Shadow Play Alchemy Redolence & Enchantment

‘Paper Horses: Women Witchcraft & Sex’: Solo Show Material Gallery Kingly Court London

Varoom article ‘A Kind of Magic’ August 2010

Solo Shows

Welcome to the World of Amelia Johnstone – Material Ludlow 2009

‘Polska Podroz: with Cossacks, the Devil, Shellewellyn and Me’, The Blue Room, Royal College of Art London, December 2002

Random, Reverie and Rapture’, The Blue Room, Royal College of Art London, April 2002

Group Shows

Bare Bones Neu Gallery November 2009 and March 2010.

Faust Work exhibited as part of the Big Draw Material Ludlow October 2008

Celebration 150 years West Buckland School opened by Princess Royal October 2008

‘Le Gun the Family’ La Rochelle School Shoreditch London September 2008

‘Le Gun’- Dream Machine – Performance and Exhibition White Chapel Gallery London June 2007

‘Planet Le Gun’- Brighton, January 2007

‘Strange Works’ – March of the Dead, October 2006

‘Le Gun’: Festival of Illustration Brick Lane London May 2006

‘Le Gun’: No 8 Regent Street London, June – September 2005

Book Arts Exhibition – Hereford College of Arts – April 2005 and Hay on Wye Festival May 2005

‘Le Gun’, Notting Hill Arts Club, September – November 2005

‘Body Interpretations’, St Martin’s in the Fields Crypt Gallery, September – October 2005,

‘Le Gun’, The Match Bar, Oxford Street, London, July – September 2004,

‘Le Gun’, ICA London and L’Institute Francais Kensington London, In collaboration with the COMICA Festival, May – July 2004

‘Your Cup’: an exhibition celebrating sustainability and the cup, Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art London, December 2003

The Show 2: Communications Art and Design, Henry Moore Gallery, Royal College of Art London, June – July 2003

Folio Society 25th Anniversary Awards, Seminar rooms, Royal College of Art London, April – May 2003

Work in Progress, Royal College of Art London, January 2003

Letter Press Annual Show, Hockney Gallery, Steven’s Building, Royal College of Art London, May – June 2002

‘The Reading Room’, The Blue Room, Royal College of Art London, June 2002

Folio Society Awards, Seminar rooms, Royal College of Art London, May 2002

Performances

‘Quentin Follies’: Charleston Farmhouse Sussex, ‘Mansfield and Miller’, July 2004

Bath Music Festival: ‘Immigration’: a performance with slides and cut outs with original music by Ben Hardwick, Royal Academy of Music, and the words of Italo Calvino from his ‘Invisible Cities’, May 2002

Notting Hill Arts Club

‘Poetry with slides’, February 2002

Awards

Hay festival Book Arts Award for ‘The Severed Head Society’ 2007

Folio Society Award for Narrative illustration of Goethe’s Faust, Royal College of Art: May 2002

Brian Robb Memorial Scholarship, Royal College of Art: June 2002

Modules Taught

Drawing Methodologies 1 ADL106

Narrative and Sequence ADL104

Narrative ADL204

Influence ADL202

Dissertation Preparation

Information Illustration ADL201

Final Major Project ADL303

Portfolio Review ADL306

Real World ADL302

Dissertation ADL304