Ella Johnston United Kingdom
I'm Ella Johnston, my practice is an ongoing investigation into mark-making, gesture, and the calligraphic line. I (mainly) draw, paint and create sculptural pieces. Alongside my studio practice, I am co-founder and Creative Director of Dunlin Press, an independent publishing and art project established in 2015.
My work deals with how histories are written, erased, and rewritten. Rooted in drawing and expanded through painting, print, and sculptural forms, it investigates the relationship between text, gesture, and memory, where marks operate simultaneously as language, image, and gesture.
Using layered paint, ink, paper, fabric, and industrial materials, I create surfaces that function as contemporary palimpsests. Recent works draw on the ideas of strata and accumulation, examining how personal and collective narratives build over time, fracture, and persist. I am interested in the instability of meaning, the tension between revelation and concealment, and the residues left behind by acts of revision.
Born in London, now based in Essex, my practice is informed by working-class East End and Irish heritage, and by growing up within London's immigrant diaspora. A background in journalism and marketing has deepened my interest in truth, myth-making, representation, and miscommunication. Paint, ink, paper, fabric, and industrial materials become vehicles through which memory, identity, and narrative are negotiated, with surfaces functioning as spaces of revision, resistance, and renewal.
Artwork
Terrain of Grief Series, Acrylic on Builder's Paper, 2026, NULL
This Was The Dream, Acrylic, Silver Leaf and Crayon on canvas, 2026, £1000
Dreaming of the Past, Acrylic, Silver Leaf and Crayon on canvasc, 2026, £200
Future City, Reclaimed by Nature , Acrylic and crayon on board, 2026, £150
Future Relic, Acrylic, silver leaf and Crayon on canvas. Partially covered by tarpaulin., 2026