Ivester Contemporary is excited to present Sympathetic Magic a solo exhibition of new work by Austin-based artist Annie May Johnston. This work centers around the Golden Bough, a tale from the Aeneid by Virgil (17 – 19 BCE). In the epic, Aeneas wishes to see the shade of his dead father, and a Golden Bough will allow him passage across the rivers and arched doors of the Underworld. The pieces in this show are Johnston’s attempt to provide her daughter with a form of protection using sympathetic magic (magic based on the assumption that a person or thing can be supernaturally affected through its name or an object representing it. Miriam Webster). Using the Underworld as metaphor for our current life, the artist is trying to ensure that her daughter can venture through the Underworld and make it back out alive, and the Golden Bough will be needed to protect against thin air and empty dreams. Birds, oracles and plant life assist in this quest and Sappho’s poems (630 BCE – 580 BCE) deliver context for the inevitable fear.

All the works in the show are subjected to a form of pressure or translation through print. Printmaking is explicitly connected to the body, not only in the physical force required to pull a print, but in its terminology. Bleed, kiss, spit, skin, bone, bite, are all common words used in the production of prints. The matrix (from the Latin for womb) is the essential structure in printmaking from which the prints are pulled, as my daughter was pulled from me.

Annie May Johnston b. 1988 is an artist and mother situated in the field of printmaking, often working towards the margins of the medium - employing new technologies alongside traditional processes. Currently she is an Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Texas at Austin where she is the Print Area head, chairs the Guest Artist in Print Program and is the faculty sponsor for the UT Riso Room. She received her MFA in Print from the University of Texas at Austin and holds undergraduate degrees in Classics and Psychology from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She was an assistant printmaker at Michael Woolworth Publications in Paris, specializing in traditional lithographic printmaking. Johnston has shown internationally and nationally including shows in Basel, New York, Houston, and London.