Amelia is co-founder the Illustration Research Network. Amelia authored the first international symposium ‘Shadow Play – Alchemy Redolence & Enchantment’ in Cardiff in 2010 and co-authored ‘The Function of Folk’ – Narrative & Society in Krakow in 2012 and presented a paper at the most recent Symposium titled ‘Sentient & Severed’ in 2021.
Amelia is part of the Metatech Research Group.
Amelia’s work is colourful, sometimes frightening, bold and immediate; she describes her process as going into ‘a sort of trance of making’ only to be flung out by some worldly interruption from her imaginative dreamscape.
Serious and sensical are her approaches to practice and teaching, realising the implications of the impact of the illustrated image in the world far beyond its immediate making. The illustrated image lives with us in society, grows with us as we grow. Quietly almost invisibly the image lives and breathes.
Amelia hope to enable students to feel a creative confidence within their work, acknowledging the impact of their work in the world, and the importance of imagination space for the participant viewer to join in allowing agency and responsibility.
Current Research:
Amelia is currently working on a book exploring the role of the Participant Viewer, curdling whilst contrarily blending a unique potion of theory from theatre, puppetry and literature to reveal the important role of imagination and to speculate upon what happens if imagination, made lollipop-like is not awakened.
Synopsis:
Illustration is most effective when its presence is almost natural, perhaps justly on the periphery of our direct experiences, it is modest, like the illustrator, shy, un-egotistical, thoughtful, yet wondrously doubled, contrary, cavorting, outrageous, eccentric, and humane.
This book will examine illustration within its wider context, like the signposts we live our lives by, unnoticed but essential, we see but don’t see, as they operate directly and inform us, we only notice them in contrast with other ways of seeing. Creating other ways of experiencing and understanding our world.
Feeling and experiencing are parts of the illustrated life that we don’t always consider, where in music, film, theatre, and so many other art forms we perhaps talk about or notice more directly our experiences, illustration is more indirectly and personally lived, so much so that other than the illustrator and those invested in illustration at the time of publishing it, is at last left unguarded, unchecked, just accepted even strangely unseen.
This book will extend the life of the illustration away from the illustrator and publisher to the illustration in its contexts in the world working with, what I will call ‘you’, ‘us’, ‘they’, ‘them’ - the participant viewer, revealing the personal and often long-lasting experience of the illustration and its impact on the growing human. It will consider the illustrated image in all-at-once-a-play being directed and performed sometimes in a fleeting moment, but with lasting effects. A sort of theatre on the page where the work performs; as the pages turn the acting illustrations come to life, where the director (illustrator) is unable to review the play, recast the performers, once the work is at large in the world it operates alone. The image has the agency.
Collaborations:
‘Can Illustration Save Lives?’ – NHS Wales Cardiff University & CSAD Illustration with Professor Delyth James funded by Welsh Government ongoing
Radio:
Amelia co-hosted Pitch Illustration Radio, Radio Cardiff 98.7fm from February 2015 – July 2017
The programmes were focussed on the Art Community in Cardiff, Illustration, and Illustration as Radio.
Symposiums:
2021 ‘Sentient and Severed’- the illustrated image away from the Illustrator Illustration Research Symposium Kingston University
2017 ‘Manipulated Puppetry Society & Storytelling’ Keynote Lecture Puppetry Research Conference for Newcastle Puppetry Festival
2014 Qualitative Research Conference Loughborough
Huw Morgan (nee Johnstone),
A., Stewart, C., Allen-Collinson, J. (2014) ‘See how they run’: film footage and drawings from ‘Run to draw’, 4th International Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise conference, Loughborough University, September 1-3.
2012 ‘Funkja Folku’ (The Function of Folk) Krakow Ethnographic Museum Poland
2011 ‘Illustration & Writing’ Manchester Metropolitan University
2010 ‘Shadow Play Alchemy Redolence & Enchantment’
Recent Publications:
Left Cultures Issue #2 August 2023
Exhibitions:
2023 ‘The Art of Play’ Ken Stradling Collection Bristol
2022 FiLiA St David’s Hall www.filia.org.uk
2020 ‘The Farness Betwean’ an itinerant installation with live drawing, inspired by the travelling shown men in Riddley Walker (Hoban, 1979); in place for the day. Amelia Huw Morgan & Chris Glynn
2013/2104
‘Space is deep’
Daniel Blau Gallery Hoxton Square London
December 2013 – February 2014
‘What is P*A*St?’
Cardiff M.A.D.E January 2014 including workshops and performances
‘From London with Love’
Material gallery and bookshop
Rivington Street London
December 2013
Funded by the Arts Council of Wales
‘A Christmas P*A*St’ a multi media puppet show through 24 doors
Arcade Cardiff
21st December 2013 – 6th January 2014
‘Once Upon Again’
London Winns Gallery 28.06.13 – 04.11.13
La Science Fiction – with Run To Draw:
Medoc Marathon France Performance September 2013
2012/2013
P*A*St installation Arcade Cardiff July 2013
‘See How They Run’ – with Run To Draw:
Edinburgh Marathon performance May 2013
‘Once Upon Again’
Cardiff Milkwood Gallery 27.02.13 – 09.03.13
‘The Function of Folk’
Ethnographic Museum Krakow November 2012 – January 2013
‘The Princess and The Pea and the Deep Blue Sea’–
Performance Wardrobe Theatre Bristol November 2012
‘Krakow Run’
Performance November 2012
‘Pheidippides 1’
Cardiff half Marathon performance October 2012
‘The Princess and the Pea’- Installation and Performance
Ethnographic Museum Krakow November 2012
2011/2102
P*A*St: Puppet Performance three tales adapted from Peter Carey’s Short Stories
Cardiff Design Festival October 2011
‘Folk After Auschwitz’
Cardiff library October 2011
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:
2017
‘Evol’- Cardiff School of Art & Design
‘To Sea In A Sieve’ – a studio exploration of ‘The Jumblies’ – Edward Lear & ‘To The Lighthouse’ Virginia Woolf - Arcade Vaults Cardiff
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
