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Well hung?

Sophie Cunningham November 25

The Ian Potter Museum of Art has just had one amazing, and various, exhibition after another this year. Last week I went to see the latest one: Tim Johnson: painting ideas. I hadn't heard of Johnson before, but one of the great things about ignorance is that it allows you to come to work fresh, unfettered by any preconceptions. I was just blown away by the breadth, the intellectual curiosity and the genuinely radical nature of his art. I don't mean by this that I thought every painting was an aesthetic success - it wasn't. But there was something exciting about the level of engagement in his work: the sense of genuine risk.

This exhibition is a major retrospective of his work that has already been shown at the Queensland Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. It features works from 1970 to the present. In the seventies Johnson was a performance artist, and performances included events in which people lay on the floor, fully dressed, and attempted to become sexually aroused (power of thought etc.). The photos taken of those love ins testify to the success or otherwise of the attempts. I don't know if the pictures were more fun, or the sight of a room full of art lovers (including me) earnestly looking at photos of men's pants for signs of erections. In the eighties Johnson was involved with the punk movement and he documented his travels around with Radio Birdman.

But for me, the most interesting aspect of his work were his collaborations with Aboriginal culture and Asian -particularly Buddhist - art. To quote from an essay on Johnson by the exhibiton's curators, Julie Ewington and Wayne Tunnicliffe:

'In 1980 Johnson visited Aboriginal artists at Papunya, and he is now best known for his influential and at times controversial paintings of Aboriginal artists and collaborative works made with leading painters such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri. He was given permission to use non-sacred motifs, which have since appeared in many of his paintings, contributing to a sense of space and time which links disparate elements into a harmonious field.

In the 1980s, however, appropriation became controversial and Johnson's eclecticism incited debate about whether artists using Aboriginal motifs were engaged in naïve theft or more meaningful engagements. The issue is complex, but because of his unique artistic vocabulary, his collaboration and his work to promote Aboriginal desert art, Johnson is often viewed as an artist who respectfully engages with Aboriginal culture.'

The attempt to work with others and cross cultural boundaries are exciting and genuine. No shades of Jeff Koons and his patronising use of 'craftsmen' here.

The exhibition runs at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne from 11 November 2009 - 14 February 2010. Go see it. Johnson pop Tim Johnson and Brendan Smith (collaborating artists), ‘Two phoenix’ 2005, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 153 x 183 cm, Queensland Art Gallery Collection


 

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