The Skinny Showcase: Jamie Johnson

Gallery | 02 Aug 2011

"A dreamlike atmosphere often provides a starting point for my work, focusing on a subtle yet surreal aspect of an everyday narrative. Drawing on historical fragments, an aspect of a place, moment in time or character provides me with an initial idea to work from and reinterpret. I get satisfaction from going off on tangents, allowing the imagery and idea forming a piece to develop as I go. 

"Regardless of the medium being used, the appropriation of found materials allows me to recontextualise my current interests and influences into a piece, which have recently included primitive architecture, oddball communities and elements of folklore. I include collaged elements to drawn pieces in order to reiterate the idea of resonating an aspect of the past. This can take form in a tiny shard of old paper, to a frottaged texture or three-dimensional object.
 
"My degree show consisted of a retrospective study of a diverse cultural space – Bristo Square in Edinburgh, where I grew up skateboarding. It became a documentation of a variety of the characters that inhabited the square, as well as aspects of the architecture and dynamics of the space. Utilising personal memory, imagination and salvaged materials, I attempted to reimagine the landscape and its many idiosyncratic features through a series of artists' books and collages."

 

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