Greg Johns Sculpture

Imagine that images of all Greg Johns' work were to be presented in a dissolve sequence, earliest to latest work. a series of horizontal forms, first triangular then linear, whipping like a loose fire hose with wave energy gradually picking themselves up off the ground alternately spinning and spiraling or coalescing into circles which break and reform. Spiral nebulae rotate before collapsing into twinned vertical spirals, which shiver with kinetic energy. Squares suddenly morph into circles. A visored figure emerges slender and insistent as a dagger. It dives, swoops or hovers like a ministering angel. Outstretched arms boil with activity; muscles ripple like a shaken carpet and flames lick at the edges; a single animated form writhes and thrashes like a creature at war within itself. Then a slow exhalation as the figure slides to the ground ripening like the swollen belly of a boab tree. Tendrils sprout from the arms and take root in stony ground. Seed pods rear upwards to become the rampant prow of a boat run aground, then a salt-laden land surfer skimming away from the coast lured by a spinning mandalic sun.

Of course in real life such things don't happen. Viewers of any of the artist's solo exhibitions will undoubtedly look from one work to another and note if anything the diversity of forms. Thus in this exhibition one encounters figurative forms alongside non-representational forms such as asymmetrical circles and wave-like fugal forms. Those more familiar with Johns' work will recognise that some, less figurative forms, initially emerged in the early 1980s.

This raises the question of why the artist would choose to exhibit recently created work within a context of ideas formulated much earlier. The artist has once remarked that he sees his solo exhibitions "as a challenging time, when recently investigated conceptual/visual material is revealed for the first time and ongoing developments are refined and further evaluated. I like the notion of travelling backwards and forwards (and sometimes sideways) in the continuing development of my sculpture."

The key point here is that Johns' practice or creative journey is not based on some linear trajectory which tends to leave previous or earlier work in its wake. His work has always been based on enduring ideas that for Johns are capable of being re-visited and re-explored. Central to this ideas base has remained the idea of everything being interconnected. He has stated that, "Holistic notions are clearly a central paradigm at the heart of my sculpture. It is an area of philosophical investigation which does not view the world solely in a mechanistic, random fashionit presents a paradigm where interconnectedness, patterning, symbolism, timelessness, the unfolding of subtler and more complex systems, questions of spirit as well as physical systems and randomness all exist in an integrated manner."

In the process of what the artist describes as his "investigations", Johns has developed sculptural forms and motifs that are visual metaphors for his belief that everything in the cosmos from sub-atomic particles to individual lives, entire human societies and cosmic galaxies are interconnected. By the early 1990s related investigations had become reflexively embedded in his practice as an operating principle of art based on nature's governing systems. In broad terms, he sees these systems as change, interconnection and complexity.

What makes this process particularly interesting is that over the last decade his work has become more 'inland-centric', motivated to a significant degree by the artist's purchase of and sculptural engagement with a rainshadow rural property at palmer, east of adelaide. Here in this bare-boned environment sculptural forms developed years earlier from deliberations on particle theory and archetypal spirit shapes representing the presence of humanity in Australia, both past and present, sit side by side, as they do in this exhibition.

The Yin Yang dynamics of Pattern 11 reflect pattern-based investigations of the mid 1980s which give expression to the idea of meaning being found in a chain of events rather than in random, individual occurrences. As one walks around this work it also manifests in its constantly unfolding and 'flip-flopping' viewpoints the idea of infinite change within a closed system. Similar perspectives can be applied to Guardian Figure with its referencing of a fugal melodic theme subject to constant imitation and overlay and even to the more asymmetrical, Wavering Circle. the journey to the outer reaches of what is possible or imaginable is extended in Beyond the Flatlanders (Woven/Interwoven) in which the artist's most faithful of companions, the fractal Y-form unit, is entrusted with the task of creating what can be best described as 'worm-holes' in notional space. Such works represent a key disposition in Johns' practice, to explore the unexplorable, that speculative zone that defines artists and scientists in a common quest to understand the nature of existence. And when scientific logic as a tool of enquiry is not sufficient there is always poetic insight as seen in the cosmic dancing of the artist's magnificent Whirling Mandala visually boosted by the constantly writhing linear pathway created by the interlinked Y-units.

In fact the circular mandalic form can be taken as the ideal metaphor to approach and appreciate Johns' work. It can be entered at any point and run in either direction and it signposts the polarities in the artist's work which create a sense of dialogue between the particular and the general. The artist's sustained focus on the figure into the 1990s corresponded with a gathering interest in the Australian landscape. What we see in a number of recent works included in this exhibition is an evolution of ideas that can be traced to the authoritative Floating Figure and similar figurative works of the 1990s which embody cross-cultural traditions of archetypal spirit figures as well as an affirmation of wave particle principles underlying appearances.

The tendril-like extremities of Horizon Figure and the 'piled-rock character of Mentor (The Old Mob) are indicators of trends which emerged in Johns' investigations within the last decade in which questions about relationship with place and the australian inland in particular were emerging. the 'rocks' in Mentor are inspired by ridge escarpments observed while travelling inland. The drooping extremities of Shedding Figure reference the appearance and action of bark stripping from a tree. Most recently this idea of being defined by real, local events and environments has taken a biographical twist in Monument to Mulga Bill and Neighbour, in which Johns reflects on the lessons of his own grandfather's (William Johns) 1911 extraordinary encounter with an aboriginal man (known as neighbour and also recorded as mallyalewga and aya-igal). Herein lies the uniqueness, authenticity and poetry of Johns' sculptural work; its ability to evoke infinity while acknowledging the here, the now and the personal.

© John Neylon 2010 - neylonj@bigpond.net.au

John Neylon is an Adelaide-based independent arts writer and curator. He is the author of Horizon, Greg Johns Sculptures 1977 2002 (Macmillan 2002), the curator of Patterns of Thought, a survey exhibition of Greg Johns' work, McClelland Gallery + Sculpture Park, Victoria, 2006/2007, and is currently writing a new book on the artist to be published by Australian Art Resources.