Paul Johns
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1951
A Perfect Childhood
- 2002
- Photograph
- Presented by the artist, 2009
- 1017 x 1235mm
- 2009/048
Tags: animals, children (people by age group), doors, masks (costume), rabbits, structural frames, walls, windows
The past is the subject of this photograph by Paul Johns – as it is the subject of all photographs. A photograph exists in the present, but what is photographed is immediately and always the past. Rather than reconstruct a specific memory, Johns’s photograph alludes to the construction of memory itself – partial, hallucinatory, inconclusive and often pieced together afterwards from photographs. The rabbit’s head somehow suggests the fevered vision of a dream, or perhaps the White Rabbit from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – always late and anxiously running to catch up.
(Now, Then, Next: Time and the Contemporary, 15 June 2019 – 8 March 2020)
Exhibition History
Related reading: Beasts
Notes
Zoology
I'm pretty sure the kids at my daughters pre-school haven't seen Cai Guo-Qiang's Heritage, which was commissioned for his show Falling Back To Earth at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane last year.
Notes
The Mouse-trap by Petrus van der Velden
This article first appeared as 'Cleverly caught' in The Press on 14 February 2014.
Notes
It's Showtime!
Today is Show Day here in Canterbury. Over at Canterbury Agricultural Park you can see thousands of animals being put through their paces or if you'd rather, you can look at some of these equally beautiful beasts from our collection.
Notes
Eileen Mayo
It's 107 years since this multi-talented artist, described by art historian Kenneth Clark as 'outstandingly good', was born in Norwich, England.
Notes
Lizard's Lounge
I stumbled into their lair on accident, and found myself in a madhouse of reptilian decree. I immediately froze, in a vain hope they had not noticed me in my peculiarity, but my attempts were feeble, I had been seen. I felt a cold sweat and a shiver ran down my spine as they glared at me with beady black eyes from a nebulous of smoke and dust that choked the room. I was their intruder. One of the lizards mockingly hissed a welcome, 'Please take a seat, you look weary.'
Notes
Loads of bulls
Looking out of the library window at the Kings Manor here in York I can see a bronze calf.
Notes
A Well Timed Care Package
One of the best-timed gifts my family and I have ever received arrived at our home on Mt Pleasant in May.
Notes
Animals
The Gallery's Registration department keeps a close watch on our collection of art, with regular audits to make sure all is as it should be.
Notes
When is a dog a mouse?
Throughout the centuries man has delighted in creating representations of his canine companions.