George Johnson

The Artist

Survey - Crawford, French, Johnson, Kemp, Senbergs, National Gallery of Victoria, 1965, no. 18;
Abstraction 12, Charles Nodrum Gallery, 9 - 23 Nov, 2013, no. 6

Christopher Heathcote, et al, George Johnson - World View, Macmillan, Melbourne, 2008, see p 46 - 49 for discussion of the series of which this is one: dating from the early 1960's, they are loosely referred to as the "Earth series", based on the common title - Earth Order, Earth Rhythms, etc. Several were selected by Brian Finemore John Stringer for the significant Survey of younger contemporaries shown at the NGV noted above. "The 1960's cog-wheel paintings now seem an aberration within the slow and deliberate development of his non-objectivity, for they offer clear allusions to land forms and living organisms and owe more than a little to lessons learned by early association with Theo Schoon and Gordon Walters. Perhaps, like Walters and his "koru" symbol, or his friend French with his readily recognisable "emblematic" forms, Johnson was seeking a personalised formal language through which his work would be immediately identified.. In this he succeeded. That the effort was intense is borne out by copious sketchbook drawings, some of which are annotated." p. 48 Heatcote, op.cit.