‘I have dared over the last five decades to make sculpture that engages with questions of timelessness and place. This has been against the recent dominant paradigms of the art world, where passing trends, internationalism, deconstruction, and notions such as Post Modernism and positive nihilism have held sway. This is what has made my sculpture challenging. It draws from the bottomless well of the selfless, rather than the surface world of the self. Contemporary mythology, place, previous and contemporary sculpture, and questions of spirit all nourish my output. It is a source of endless wonder, forever changing in form but connected to something which is very still, changeless’. – Greg Johns, 2017 .

Australian landmark sculpture - Greg Johns

Greg Johns — Fifty Years of Sculpture

Greg Johns has been working as a full-time sculptor since 1978. Fifty years on, more than 100 major works stand in public and private sites across Australia and internationally, the product of a practice built around one idea he has held since the beginning.

“My intention, from very early on, was to make a sculpture which was timeless; both conceptually and form wise. I have not deviated from that intention.” 

 

Since 1975, Johns has forged a distinctive artistic path, deeply influenced by the Australian landscape and its timelessness. That influence shifted and deepened over decades. In the early 1990s his work moved away from an international abstract style toward something more grounded in the Australian landscape, though the underlying concerns remained the same. Form, space, the way a large object holds its ground in the open air.

It was and remains driven by a passion to not only make sculptures but to create large-scale works for public spaces. Johns’ first major work, Rhythm, was installed at Glenelg foreshore in 1978. It is still there.

The scale of what he has built over fifty years is difficult to overstate. Around 50 solo shows and around 400 group exhibitions in Australia and internationally, resulting in work being in major public and private collections around the world.

A member of the New York Sculptors’ Guild and the International Sculpture Centre, Johns purchased 400 acres of land in the Adelaide Hills and spent more than two decades placing works through the landscape, restoring the ecology alongside it, and founding the Palmer Sculpture Biennial, now one of the longest-running sculpture events in the country.

Greg is frank about what the work has cost. “It has had its moments when it has been physically, psychologically and financially debilitating” 

On receiving the Helen Lempriere Scholarship he offered a simpler account of where fifty years had brought him. “The journey has been both a ‘hard fought’ and heartfelt one. I am genuinely grateful… acknowledging my contribution to a sculptural sensibility, which reflects both the uniqueness of Australia and universal forces.”

2025 marks the anniversary with a major retrospective at Australian Galleries Melbourne, the installation of a new large-scale public work in Sydney, and the opening of the Palmer Ecoshed, a research residency built over nearly three years on the sculpture landscape he has spent two decades developing.

ARTpark Australia is proud to represent Greg Johns and to have placed his works in collections and public spaces across the country. His sculpture is available through us in a range of scales and editions, with commissions welcomed for site-specific projects.