Using a South Island slang term for crotch, the more subtle ‘crutch’, Paul Johns combines an interest in subversive subject matter with an eye for elegant execution in these Polaroid photographs from 1980. Directing his lens, and our gaze, into spaces that are uncomfortably personal, Paul explores how images that can be read formally as studies in shape, colour and texture also have the power to provoke.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- 21 July 2024)