Tony Johnston ‘Less Than Pawns’
NOTE: Work is not currently able to be purchased on line.
Enquires to Lynn Lawton: 021685737 or [email protected]
Medium: Wood, paint, clay
My work uses the platform Stations of the Cross as does Hotere. The palette is similarly predominately black. The subject of the work is also overseas conflict that has developed through our country’s tacit approval of policies and actions that we seem forced to approve of and even participate in. My materials are somewhat different being pieces of ceramic material that have been carved glazed and then fired in a very unfriendly environment producing destruction and deformity. These works were then framed in an ad hoc frame set up resembling what you might be able to make in a bombed out area where there is no drinking water and you are starving to death while watching members of your family die in front of your eyes and there is no apparent hope available.
Tony Johnston
Tony has been painting seriously since the late 1970’s. His work reads like a no-holds-barred, psychological diary of a life with paint. Tony hits his surfaces with direct and brutal inner-vitality, always Porking the antelope (Tony speak for pushing the envelope). His colours, primitive shapes, unearthed figures and word-plays, agitate and provoke.
