Agnes Martin - Julie Johnstone

agnes martin
‘on a clear day’

The central focus of my practice recently has been working to build a body of book works and poem-objects inspired by the painter Agnes Martin. I am also interested in collaborating on book works with other poets and artists who have used her paintings and writings as inspiration.

This is a long-term project, and I have shown the first stage of the work in an exhibition at the Bower Ashton Library, UWE, Bristol, 21 April – 28 June 2023. I also showed new works from this project at the Artists’ BookMarket at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (18-19 February), at PAGES Artist Book Fair, Leeds (17-18 March) and at Small Publishers Fair, Conway Hall, London, 27-28 October 2023.

Currently an exhibition of a selection of the works are on display in the Library at Edinburgh College of Art 12 January – 29 February 2024, alongside two watercolours by Alan Shipway.

Please see below for a listing of the works made to date. An annotated listing with further details on the ideas behind each piece is also available on request.

featured works

flowers

white flower

white flower | after a painting by Agnes Martin | Julie Johnstone | 1000 paper sculptures made from 50mm squares of Japanese rice paper using the children’s game form commonly known as a ‘fourtune teller’ | each sculpture is c.25mm square | installation | 2023 | installation not currently for sale, but see near the bottom of the page for details of a limited edition boxed piece based on this work

about the project & exhibition

Julie Johnstone is an artist, curator and publisher working primarily in the book form. For this exhibition at 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. My 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 those connections might be. I also wanted to unravel the mystery of ‘influence’. I was interested in asking what it is 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.

all works, in alphabetical order by title

a blue line, becoming

a long exhale

above the line

agnes martin : an assay

more images

blossom

clean slate | clear state

cyan line with two black lines

cyanometer

fan book | h 25mm x w 175mm | printed inkjet on 300gsm Bockingford watercolour paper | after de Saussure; plays with the idea of the original cyanometer, an instrument made in the 1780s by Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (with Alexander von Humboldt) to measure the blueness of the sky, but uses the full spectrum of 1-100% cyan and 1-100% of a mix of cyan/black | originally created for the The Book of the Sky exhibition in 2017 | original limited edition of 5 at £150 sold out | new edition made for the Agnes Martin project | new 2023 edition of 25 | £150 | purchase | read more

devotion

devotion | Julie Johnstone | double-sided sewn concertina | book is h120mm x w120mm folded; approx w8,640mm | printed inkjet in greys and cyan on 12 lengths of 740mm Bockingford watercolour 190gsm | side one is a text sequence created by using titles of paintings by Agnes Martin in chronological order by year; side two is a text sequence consisting of c.800 phrases chosen from the writings and lectures of Agnes Martin, and arranged in a totally random order | hand bound with linen thread | limited edition of 30 | 2023 | £150 | purchase
Can be purchased as a pair with FOLLOWING THE LINE (see below) for £250 purchase

more images of devotion

flowers

following the line

following the line | Julie Johnstone | double-sided sewn concertina | book is h120mm x w120mm folded; approx w8,640mm | printed inkjet on 12 lengths of 740mm Bockingford watercolour 190gsm | both sides consist of sequences of lines, printed in either 35% or 45% black; side one is horizontal line sequence, side two is a sequence combining horizontal and vertical lines; each sequence is a randomised arrangement of all possible versions of the pairings/triplets/quartets of positioning the lines | hand bound with linen thread | limited edition of 30 | 2023 | £150 | purchase
Can be purchased as a pair with DEVOTION (see above) for £250 purchase

more images of following the line

following the line [scroll]

grey geese

grid

grid I

grid II

happiness

horizontal line | vertical line

into the dark light

just this

let it go

memento

nothing but blue skies

on a clear day

on a clear day | poem by Jane Duran; artwork and design by Julie Johnstone | large square book | h260mm x w260mm; 36pp | The text is the poem ‘On a Clear Day 1973’ by Jane Duran, first published in her collection the clarity of distant things, Carcanet Press, 2021. It forms part of a sequence of poems, gridlines, inspired by the life and work of Agnes Martin. On a Clear Day is the title of a portfolio of thirty screenprints by Agnes Martin. The artwork and design are by Julie Johnstone in response to the poem and to On a Clear Day by Agnes Martin. | printed inkjet on Bockingford watercolour paper 190gsm, with a tracing paper end paper | 5-hole binding in linen thread | hand torn | open edition | 2023 | £35 | purchase

More images and details on the dedicated page

perceiving is receiving is responding is…

raindrops

the rose

the sunshine of solace

token

tremolo

two pencils for Agnes Martin

unmoored

we unfold

white flower

Now available: A square grey box containing fifty ‘white flowers’ from the 2023 installation white flower, which consisted of one thousand white flowers (see description above).

Edition of 20 | 2023 | £25 | purchase