Julia Johnstone has recently graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the Glasgow School of Art in 2023, following from her BA(Hons) in Fine Art Painting and Printmaking from the GSA in 2021. Her practice explores ideas of ephemerality and temporality, such as recording sunlight through painting and drawing, which is part of an ongoing investigation into documentation and the different methods of recording passing moments. Between 2020-2021 she collaborated on several film works which investigated ideas of live experience, documentation, and the ways in which we navigate virtual media. These collaborations also explored ideas of constructing characters and narrative, and explored notions of glamour, costume, and performativity.

She primarily explores colour and gesture through her painting and print-making practice, often looking to family photos, found objects and her surroundings as inspiration to form an abstracted and collaged composition. The provisional nature of this process allows her to explore the materiality of paint and other materials, and play with the pictorial and psychological spaces that unfold. Dance also forms a part of her practice, as an amateur hip-hop and contemporary dancer, the synthesis of colour and gesture in her compositions is informed by the perception of movement, spatiality, and time.

Julia Johnstone was recently the Senior Exhibition Assistant at Alberta Whittle’s ‘deep dive (pause) uncoiling memory’ exhibition at the Scottish collateral event at the Venice Biennale 2022. Her work was selected for the Royal Scottish Academy’s New Contemporaries 2023 exhibition, showcasing ‘The Mouse’ (2021) which won the National Library Purchase Prize award 2023. She directed and produced the Glasgow School of Art Christmas Card 2021, ‘The Mouse’ (2021), which premiered at the Glasgow Film Theatre. Her collaborative short film ‘The Fox’ (2021) was screened at the Glasgow Short Film Festival 2022, with a nomination for the Scotland’s Year of Short Stories award 2022. She has exhibited at a range of group shows including SWG3, Transmission Gallery, ISO Design, The Briggait, The Glue Factory and others that have taken place in Vienna and Budapest.