Unghh

Knowing Me Knowing You: New Artists’ Show 2010

2011-01-05T03:55:00.000-08:00

Knowing You, Knowing Me: New Artists’ Show 2010 / Mei Cooper, Trenton Garrett, Claire Harris, Jessica Johnson, Jeremy Leatinu’u, Tiffany Singh, Scott Satherley / 10 July - 21 August 2010

ARTSPACE  

www.artspace.org.nz

NO SOUL FOR SALE / Tate Modern

2011-01-02T04:26:00.000-08:00

HELL GALLERY at NO SOUL FOR SALE - A FESTIVAL OF INDEPENDENTS / CURATED BY MAURIZIO CATTELAN, MASSIMILIANO GIONI and CECILIA ALEMANI / TATE MODERN, 15 - 17 MAY, 2010

Hell Gallery's Furburger stand

Maurizio Cattelan

Hell Beer

Furburgers

Totem Tennis wooden rackets and stands

TV monitors in the Totem pole (footage of Super Wild Horses, Lets Get Bowried, Renny Kodgers & Unearthing the Hawke)

Maurizio playing Totem Tennis

Hell Is Other People

2009-11-14T16:51:00.000-08:00

Hell Is Other People
Jess Johnson & Jordan Marani
Exhibition from 31 Oct - 21 Nov, 2009
Inflight Gallery / 237 Elizabeth St, Hobart
www.inflight.com.au

Flippin Heck!

2009-08-29T05:18:00.000-07:00

Flippin Heck!
Jess Johnson & Jordy Marani
August 29 – September 12, 2009
Opening Friday 28 August 6pm til late
Super Diminutive Disco (inside gallery) / DJ Helen Johnson playing a special dance set / Comeback Performance by the REAL HOT BITCHES! Melbourne dance troupe / BBQ Meat Feast / Movie playing in the side room ‘Funky Forest: First Contact’ (JPN).

and then it all turned to custard...

Home Is Where My Hell Is

2009-08-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

Home Is Where My Hell Is
Jess Johnson & Jordan Marani
presented by Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA)
Switchback Gallery, Monash University, Gippsland Campus, Churchill
July 29 – September 3, 2009

An installation by Jess Johnson and Jordan Marani, founders and co-directors of Hell Gallery, Melbourne. The exhibition follows a Gippsland residency supported by Monash University’s Gippsland Centre for Art and Design (GCAD) and Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA).

"First trawl your area collecting up discarded materials. Start to build something from them. A shed. A shack. A fort. A dwelling. Whatever, it’s yours. Build it somewhere hard to find. Preferably in the forest but a city alleyway would suffice too. Hunker down and decorate. Make it safe. Surround the hut with booby traps and hang charms to ward off evil. Sustain yourself with meals of mushrooms boiled with bark. When you’re done with it walk away without looking back or push it over with your bare hands and stand back grinning at the big ‘WHUMP!’"

MCA: I Walk The Line: New Australian Drawing

2009-01-12T22:42:00.000-08:00

I Walk The Line: New Australian Drawing
Museum of Contemporary Art (SYD)
17 March - 24 May 2009

'Artvader & The Attack of The White Cube'
Pen on Paper 2008, Jess Johnson

Hellraiser: The Director's Cut / Hell Gallery

2009-01-11T04:26:00.000-08:00

Hellraiser: The Director's Cut
Jess Johnson & Jordan Marani
Hell Gallery, 2008

This Is Not A Love Schlong

2009-01-10T05:05:00.000-08:00

This Is Not A Love Schlong
Utopian Slumps, Melbourne, 2007y Hour, 2007

Squaresville, 2007

Glump, 2007

Mega Bargains! Super Sale! 2007

Mixed Tape, 2007

Drawings

2009-01-09T07:13:00.000-08:00

Notebooks 2008

2009-01-08T05:43:00.000-08:00

Notebook 2006

2009-01-07T21:43:00.000-08:00

Flyers/Posters

2009-01-06T19:56:00.000-08:00

 OOGA BOOGAS / DUCK JUGGLER / Hell Gallery / 2010

NO SOUL FOR SALE / Tate Modern / 2010 

I LIKE YOUR SMALL OPENING / Hell Gallery / 2010

KNOWING YOU KNOWING ME: NEW ARTISTS SHOW / Artspace / 2010 

BOOMGATES / LOST ANIMAL / CARBORATOR / Hell Gallery / 2010 

AlL MY FRIENDS ARE MONSTERS / Fanny Brown, Jacquelyn Greenbank, Jamie Richardson / Hell Gallery / 2009

The Hell / Jensen Tjhung / Hell Gallery / 2009

In And Out No Funny Business / Dan Moynihan / Hell Gallery / 2009

Dot Dot Dot / Curated by Lisa Radford and Sam George / Hell Gallery / 2009

For What It's Worth / Nat Thomas / Hell Gallery / 2009

Get Oak Firmness / Curated By Elvis Richardson / Hell Gallery / 2009

Portrait Series #4:33/3 / Nick Devlin /  Hell Gallery / 2009

Jess Jordan & Jordan Marani / Who Cut The Cheese? Two Giants Of Contemporary Art Speak Frankly Of Monumental Things / Seventh Gallery / 2009

Straight Edge / Stuart Bailey / Hell Gallery / 2008

Luxury, Serenity, Pleasure / Steven Rendall / Hell Gallery / 2008

The Monobrow Show / Hell Gallery / 2008

Drawing A Conclusion / Curated by Danny Lacy / Hell Gallery / 2008

Unearthing the Hawke / Lane Cormick / Hell Gallery / 2008

Hellraiser: The Director's Cut / Jess Johnson & Jordan Marani / Hell Gallery / 2008

Cutups

2009-01-05T01:15:00.000-08:00

Comics

2009-01-04T02:57:00.000-08:00

Artvader #1

Artvader and the Attack of the White Cube

Blank Comic

Lonely & Friends

Teeth Envy

Done For Cash

2009-01-03T07:05:00.000-08:00

Photos

2009-01-02T04:36:00.000-08:00

List

2009-01-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

David Hick’s Dad, Bill Murray, The Wheelers from Return to Oz, Men Of Porn, David Berkowitz, New Zealand Cults, KAZ, Howard Finster, Total Recall, Mark Beyer, Fraggle Rock, Klaus Kinski, Zombies, The Heavenly Music Corporation, J.G.Ballard, Ufology, home videos of UFO's on youtube, Mike Diana, Bands from Cleveland, Flux Capacitor, Henning Wagenbreth, Horror Vacui, Urban Drain Exploring, Robert Picton, Bonnie Tyler Total Eclipse of the Heart, Neologisms, Algernon Blackwood The Willows, John Carpenter films, Swamp Thing, Elvis, Stalkers, Martians, Suzanne Paul, Que Suerte Zine, Brian Aldiss Non-Stop, Kitlers, Supermarkets, Supermarket Packaging, Thomas Ott, Takashi Miike, Los Angeles Free Music Society, Halley’s Comet, Theodore Sturgeon, Artist Assistants, James Herbert, Expander Foam, All-You-Can-Eat Buffets, Sloths, Sloth from The Goonies, Amy Szostak, Scott Walker, Hillary Lloyd’s human pyramids, Ernst Haekal Artforms in Nature, Hillsong Church, Jack Pumpkinhead, Sonic Boom, Monobrows, John Wyndham, Super Wild Horses, Gregor Schneider, Rose Salmon, Hell Hall, Marmalade, Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Crumb, Robert Crumb's brothers, Louis Theroux, Infomercials, Butthole Surfers, The Alien Quadrilogy, Cormac McCarthy Child of God, RAW Magazine, Baby Sue magazine, Cannibalism, Paul McCarthy, dropped notes, Basil Wolverton, Brown Rats, Anti heroes, Ray Bradbury Something Wicked this Way Comes, Meat, Endism 666, John Baldessari, Religious Knives, Butt Plugs, Large Holes, Celebretard, Edward Gein, Heavy Metal Magazine, Morten Harket, Destroy All Monsters, Sexton Ming, WING (singing sensation), Jim Henson, Birds Eating Birds, Chris Ware, Slim Barrie, William Gibson, Tiffany I Think We’re Alone Now, Sewers, Konrad Bayer Idiot, Paul Thomas Anderson, Cow eating chicken video on youtube, Terry Zwigoff, Black Devil Disco Club, Texas, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Fantographics, Giant Fruit of Cromwell, Henry Flynt Hillbilly Tapes Music, Diaries, Passive Aggression, Eye Violence, Me, Albert Fish, Drew Barrymore Child Star, Machine Guitars, DIY knitted teletubbies, Obet Trouve, Daniel Clowes, Megalopolis, Great Apes, Goths, Mad Max Conventions, Ben Lewis Art Safari, Cattle Mutilation, Michael Haneke Benny’s Video, Shudder Pulp, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Pere Ubu, The Exile, Gluesniffers, Brian Eno Here Come the Warm Jets, Murder, Boiled Angel, Captain Beefheart, Pelican eating duck, The Tomorrow People, Back to the Future, Multiples, Photocopied Gig Flyers, Playdo, Snake Eyes, Werner Herzog Even Dwarfs Started Small, Charles Burns Black Hole, Enders Game, Anal Cunt, Mike Kelly, Mike and Kelly Pussycats, 'Search and Destroy' Back Tattoos, Dronology, I Stand Alone, True Porn, Sun O))), Joe Coleman, Carston Holler, Mike Nelson, The Burnt Children of America, Salo, James Cameron, The Thing, Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, The Metamorphosis, McSweeney's, Keiji Haino, Chris Kraus I Love Dick, Tony Conrad Early Minimalism, The Simpsons dubbed in German, Jesse Pomeroy child killer, Paul Auster, Konrad Lorenz On Aggression, White Fungus, Satoru Ogura The Guinea Pig Films, Jim Jarmusch, Home Made Time Machines, The Vaselines, fans, Lukas Moodyson, Howdy Doody, George. A. Romero, Porno Plasticene, Lux Interior, Wes Craven, The Bootleg Tapes Story 1981 – 1982, Renee French Grit Bath, Scabs, Das Dieter Roth oRchester, The Inevitability of Mind Control through Nanotechnology

Interview

2009-01-01T05:30:00.000-08:00

Artist Interview for the exhibition Zonal Marx / VCA Gallery / Melbourne / Jan 2007

What are some things you collect or obsess over?
I collect what people might call rubbish. But only quite specific pieces of rubbish that align themselves to elusive rules that I make up. I have piles of other people’s scraps: lists, doodles, ripped bits from magazines. Also anything hand crafted that once might have been cherished then discarded over time. I like objects infused with other peoples care & attention. Then there are observations, snippets of conversations that I scribble down. The interesting part is when compiling all these bits I will look for cryptograms and re-occurring symbols that I imagine have hidden portents for me. For example… in a short space of time, picking up a book of Thurber’s Sketches & Dog tales in a free basket outside a second-hand store. Meeting a boy named Feeley (the name of Thurber’s first and favourite dog). Finding a shopping list with ‘DOG’ scrawled large across it. These all go together. I obsess over things that repeat. Or incidents of synchronicity. Sometimes I think the world is wonderfully coded and I furiously try to decipher the clues that are left for me. Other times I resign myself to the view that my stale brain is just throwing up elaborate treasure hunts to keep itself entertained amongst all the shopping.

If you could direct me one place or destination, where would it be and what should I do there?
Go to one of the cold, grey parts of New Zealand. Then lie on a bed for your formative years reading nothing but science fiction novels whilst brewing up large pots of San Pedro cactus to extract the mescaline.

What are your greatest doubts? And are these preoccupations or insecurities expressed in your artwork?
I bath in failure every day! Failure as an artist. Failure at smooth social interactions. Failure to return my library books on time. Failure to be a good daughter. Failure to make any money. Failure to stick with anything. My artwork is a channelled mess of all these insecurities.

What was the last thing you saw on the street and picked up?
I pick up anything with handwriting on it. Shopping lists are very telling and exciting of course. Last year I was at the supermarket and I picked up a yellow post-it note stuck to the floor. There was only three items noted: mushrooms, butter and balsamic vinegar. A rather unexciting list by all accounts. But I pocketed it, found what else I was looking for and left the store. Once out the doors I surprised myself with by impulsively picking up a dropped till receipt in the carpark. I wouldn’t usually pick up till receipts, as there’s nothing of the personal in them. Anyway I read the receipt and found the items listed were:

MUSHROOMS 1.79
FARMLAND BUTTER 375GRAM 1.89
MAZZETTI BALSAMIC VINEGER 250ML 2.79

I stuck the post-it note to the till receipt and now they hold a special place in my collection.

Can you describe what you’re thinking about when you are drawing? Is your internal state reflected in each drawing or is your mind elsewhere?
I can get really frustrated when I’m drawing. I tell myself to just leave it alone. You always have to OVERDO everything! Put down the pen. Walk away. You’ll ruin it. But before I reach that point there is absolute serenity when I’m just distractedly following the lines around in some half conscious fugue state.

CV

2009-01-01T04:00:00.000-08:00

B. 1979, Tauranga, New Zealand

Bachelor of Fine Arts, Canterbury University, NZ (1997 – 2001)

Recent Art Projects / Residencies

2010 Invitation to participate in No Soul For Sale– a festival of 50 independent galleries from around the world, Tate Modern, London

2009 Gippsland Centre for Art and Design (GCAD), residency and exhibition (Switchback Gallery), facilitated by Monash University Museum of Art

2008 Founder and co-director of Hell Gallery (with Jordan Marani)

2007 Founding member of curatorial collective PILOT (Jess Johnson, Rosemary Forde, Meredith Turnbull)

2006 Founding committee member of Victoria Park Gallery, Abbotsford

www.victoriaparkgallery.com

Exhibitions

2011 THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE, Shepperton Art Gallery, Shepperton

2010 KNOWING YOU, KNOWING ME: NEW ARTISTS SHOW 2010, Artspace, Auckland, NZ / NO SOUL FOR SALE, Tate Modern, London, UK / HELL’S BOTTOM DRAWER, Hell Gallery, Melbourne

2009 HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE, Inflight Gallery, Tasmania (collaboration with Jordan Marani) / FLIPPIN HECK, Hell Gallery, Melbourne (collaboration with Jordan Marani) / HOME IS WHERE MY HELL IS, Switchback Gallery, GCAD, Gippsland (collaboration with Jordan Marani) / I WALK THE LINE: NEW AUSTRALIAN DRAWING, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney / WHO CUT THE CHEESE? TWO GIANTS OF CONTEMPORAY ART TALK FRANKLY OF MONUMENTAL TASKS, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne (collaboration with Jordan Marani)

2008 HELLRAISER: THE DIRECTORS CUT, Hell Gallery, Melbourne (collaboration with Jordan Marani) / JAM, Peloton Gallery, Sydney / HONK IF YOU LOVE CONTEMPORARY ART, Ryan Renshaw Gallery, Brisbane / ROBERT JACKS DRAWING PRIZE, finalist, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo / DIRTY POPSICLES, Peloton Gallery, Sydney / INFORMAL RITUALS, tcb Gallery, Melbourne

2007 THIS IS NOT A LOVE SCHLONG (collaboration with Jordan Marani) Utopian Slumps, Melbourne / CUT ‘N’ PASTE, Peloton Gallery, Sydney / PLIN TUP ‘Second Impact’, Galerie Plin Tub, Brussels, Belgium / FUNNY HA HA, The Narrows, Melbourne / ZONAL MARX - A Drawing Project, VCA Gallery, Melbourne

2006 PORTRAIT OF SALOTE TAWALE, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne / VICTIMS OF DRAWING SUPPORT GROUP, Victoria Park Gallery, Melbourne

2004 LADRON!, La Aguja Gallery, Madrid, Spain

2003 THE FUTURE IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE (solo), The Kiosk – A Physics Room Public Art Site, NZ

2002 LITTLE BEASTS (collaboration with Jacqueline Greenbank), High

Street Project, NZ

2000 THIS ANIMAL IS MISCHEVOUS (solo), High Street Project, NZ

Curated Exhibitions

2010 HELL’S BOTTOM DRAWER, Hell Gallery, Melbourne

2008 THE MONOBROW SHOW, Hell Gallery, Melbourne / FLUX CAPACITOR – A Pilot Project, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne

2007 FUNNY HA HA, The Narrows, Melbourne / ZONAL MARX - A Drawing Project, co-curated with Meredith Turnbull, VCA Gallery, Melbourne / MELBOURNE OPERATIC – screening of recent Melbourne video art, Loop

2006 VICTIMS OF DRAWING SUPPORT GROUP, co-curated with Meredith Turnbull, Victoria Park Gallery, Melbourne

Writing (Select)

2009 TOTAL REKALL, Catalogue essay for Perth Institute of Contemporary Art.

2009 Too Much Of Me, Catalogue essay for ‘Too Much Of Me’ curated by Geraldine Barlow, Monash University Museum of Art / Still Sitting Still, Catalogue essay for Dan Moynihan, Utopian Slumps Gallery

2008 Venice Licks, Feature Article, Unmag Issue 2.1 / Order of Appearance. SPEECH online

2007 Anti is the New Hero, Catalogue essay for Nick Devlin, Sullivan + Strumph / Experimenta Playground, SPEECH online

2006 Money for Nothing and the Pics for Free, IsNot Magazine

2005 Diary of a merch dolly, Serialized European tour diary published in: Whatwedoissecret Magazine, Issues 1 – 4 / Up Yours Magazine, Issues 36 – 39 (Belgium)

2004 Dirty Pixels, Catalogue Essay for Deborah White / Plastic Wrapped Pets, ACCA ONLINE Magazine

2003 Into the Void – An interview with Ronnie Van Hout, The package (NZ) / [phage], Mary Flanagan artist essay, The Physics Room Annual (NZ) / Empire tc9, Catalogue essay for R.A. Brunton, SOFA Gallery (NZ)

Comics Published

Lonely & Friends comic featured in: Que Suerte Magazine (Spain) The Thief issue 2005, The Woods issue 2006, The Teeth issue 2007 / Choice Comics Anthology, Issue 1, 2007 (NZ) / Splitter Magazine, Issue 1, 2006 (NZ) / Phatsville Comics, Issues 9, 10, 11, 12 (Aus) / BAM! Big Ass Mini, 2006 (USA) / Shiot Crock, Issue 12, 2006 (USA) / IsNot Magazine: TimeISNOTMoney 2006 (Aus)

Artvader comic featured in: Runway Magazine, Issue 9: Change, 2007 (Aus) / Plintub Comic Anthology 2007 (Belg) / Pictozine II, Aotearoa Comics, 2006 (NZ) / BOYCRAZY Comic Anthology, 2007 (NZ)