Jess Johnson

b.1979

Boston Visionary Cell

  • 2013
  • Pen, copic markers, metallic paint on paper
  • Purchased 2013
  • 640 x 830mm
  • 2013/072

“I’ve drawn for as long as I remember”, says Jess Johnson, a New Zealand artist now living in New York, whose work blends science fiction, popular culture and technology, creating speculative worlds in architectural settings. “Elements of my drawings now aren’t very different from what I drew as a kid. I always used lots of repetitive pattern and I would just work the page until I’d filled it to the edges. There’s something about the labour involved in drawing that suits my psychology. It means I get to spend long hours in the studio thinking my own thoughts.”“What comes out of my drawings is a result of what I put in. The books that I read. The things that scare me”, she says. “To be able to imagine different possibilities, that’s the first step to being able to change your own reality. To be able to imagine a different one.”

(We do this, 12 May 2018 - 26 May 2019)

Exhibition History