Image above: Greg Johns Transfigure 2006 Corten steel edition 5 240 x 57 x 40 cm
Sculptor, Greg Johns’ work, Transfigure, has been featured as the New Art Centre’s ‘Work of the Week’.
The New Art Centre is a sculpture park and gallery, specialising in 20th and 21st century works of art, set in over sixty acres of parkland in the Wiltshire countryside, England.
In 2002, Greg Johns purchased 400 acres of land at Palmer, a small town two hours drive from Adelaide. It is a landscape of bare hills, sparse vegetation, rocks, boulders, steep escarpments and an enveloping sky of distant horizons. In the years since, Johns has placed the totemic forms of his sculpture in juxtaposition with this harsh, elemental countryside. Although his work looks very much at home in its Australian surroundings, Johns hopes that the visual language is equally understood around the world:
‘I have exhibited extensively in Europe over the last 20 years, in England, Spain and Denmark. What I have been insistent on is sending sculpture which has been “forged” from the interior and exterior forces of this place, Australia. I believe this work which has historical links back to European sculpture, but at the same time has been modified, hybridised by influences from this place [Australia], has a quality which can now inform sculpture in the northern hemisphere.’ – Greg Johns, 2010
Born in Adelaide in 1953, Johns was educated at the South Australian School of Art, and has had solo exhibitions in Australia, Asia, New York and the UK, most notably Thirty Year Retrospective at the McClelland Museum, Melbourne in 2006. Johns is widely regarded for his commissions, including: Pattern 3, Pocheon, Korea, 2005; Landlines, Gawler, Adelaide; and the upcoming Within – Without for the Lachlan River Sculpture Trail, New South Wales, 2022.
To read more about the New Art Centre, and to view a video of the sculpture in situ, visit the New Art Centre website.
Images and text courtesy of the New Art Centre, England.