Paul Johnston

"They knew that what they were doing was their call, and they did it with great patience, perseverance, and love."
Henri Nouwen

I work in my Akepiro Street studio in Eden Terrace, where I create 3D and 2D art works. Until 2017 I also lectured in creativity and design thinking on AUT’s Design Major program. I'm also a director of Arts + Minds, which provides creative educational experiences for 2 to 5 year-olds.

I have also taught design and visual arts at Unitec and at Manukau School of Visual Arts where I was Head of Design. 

My studio practice frequently erases boundaries between art and design.

I construct sculptures, objects and furniture in paper, wood, and occasionally glass and metal, and utilise painting and drawing to support and extend my visual language. The results are often hybrids, artifacts that suggest both symbolic and everyday use. 

I employ a handmade aesthetic, often using inexpensive and easy-to-manipulate materials that seem to stand in for something other than what they are. I often draw from internalized knowledge of utilitarian forms so that they appear as a "familiar form", something comprised of recognisable shapes or patterns, a configuration that I sense we know but maybe is somewhat out of context.

An example of this is the paper and gesso formed beater series of the Pacific Artifacts body of works that repeats the form of a Tapa beater, an old hand-tool that came to me from my Grandfather's tool collection. While the form of these beaters resembles the Tapa beater, and the ergonomics of a hand-tool, their surface treatment suggests something else, perhaps a different scale that of a tower or chimney stack. 

This would suggest that I am interested in creating artifacts that exist in more than one state. One of the ways I have achieved this is through the transformational possibility of constructions that can flex through 2D and 3D states using hinging, rolling and folding, which allows the choice of presentation as flattened and wall mounted, or rolled as a standing object.