There’s something about you that I’m unsure about

Paul Johnson locates artefacts which are unwilling to give you clues to their history as a starting point for a new collection of intricate collages.

Do you ever have that feeling when something , or someone, a face, a photograph haunts you slightly. That man in the newspaper looks strangely familiar, or the old photograph in the museum seems to have one character who stares out at you, more intensely than the rest, connected, as if he was alive today. You can't put your finger on it but these interactions with certain things just kind of jolts you. Paul Johnson takes this feeling as a starting point for making art works.  Images and objects which stand out from the background clutter of everyday life are utilised to create a collection or family of works which relate to each other through a gut instinct in the artist.

For this show Paul has worked with our collections to locate objects and artefacts which are unwilling to give you clues to their uses. Objects that when first seen in the museum stores had no clear sense of the time in which they were produced or their purpose.

These objects are displayed alongside Pauls intensely worked collages and paper mache images to create a display of intense beauty and intrigue which encourages us to consider the feelings and the images we can't describe.

 

download more information about the works in the show HERE