My Icelandic heritage and the travels of my childhood and subsequently in Africa, China and Papua New Guinea, have fuelled my search for the exotic and “the other”. I have always been a sojourner, an avid collector and a visual story teller with a strong sense of place. My practice is informed by a fascination with how objects and artefacts reveal aspects of the story of a culture and history of a place and its people.
My initial training was as a sculptor at the Canberra School of Art where I studied welded steel sculpture with Ron Robertson-Swann. My first sculptures were squarely in the tradition of the formalist welded steel sculpture of the 1960s and show the influence of sculptors such as David Smith, Anthony Caro and Ron Robertson-Swann.
My initial training was as a sculptor at the Canberra School of Art where I studied welded steel sculpture with Ron Robertson-Swann. My first sculptures were squarely in the tradition of the formalist welded steel sculpture of the 1960s and show the influence of sculptors such as David Smith, Anthony Caro and Ron Robertson-Swann.
“Largely nonfigurative… [John Gould] shows nine works. Made from steel sheets and bars they are not obviously about anything in the world, but are more concerned with form and movement…There is a central theme in all his work. The idea of a basic order being disturbed by a mounting chaos. But what makes the sculptures worth looking at… is the intelligent balancing of these two forces, order and chaos. Nowhere does one dominate the other. The solar discs scatter carelessly like discarded dominos but their original ordered pattern can still be seen. His works have a certain tension. Pieces of metal are about to fall, but don’t. Like some of David Smith’s sculptures, which are forever in a state of near collapse. Of course he is treading a well trodden path. Minimal sculptors have long been pre-occupied with these ideas and have offered similar solutions" (Sonja Kaleski, “Two views of sculpture, The Art Council’s Young Artists Exhibition—Jahna Knyvett, John Gould, Sculptures and Drawings”, The Canberra Times, December 1978).“[John Gould] explores some well worn avenues of predictability with his raw steel sculptures, but in his best works there is a refreshing feeling of the unexpected which makes me want to keep looking at them. For example, his ‘Central Rupture’ is a square of metal which explodes dynamically in several directions. The piece is both rational and excitingly irrational. Likewise, in several other sculptures, John Gould cracks and tears his metal, thus making an interesting contrast to orderliness” (Sonja Kaleski, review of Solander Gallery exhibition, The Canberra Times, April 1980).
John Gould at work, 1978
John Gould, Solar I, 1977, welded steel.
Private collection.
After graduating, and wanting to define myself as a sculptor in my own right, I became interested in sculpture having a theme or narrative—in addition to form and aesthetics.
Partly inspired by Jackson Pollock’s sand paintings and after reading Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, I started researching the ceremonies and artefacts of the Navajo, Sioux and Apache peoples.
From this, I branched out in a range of media (wood, sand, glass, bronze, steel, paint, fabric, found objects etc) to develop a narrative about the importance of place and ceremony in American Indian traditions.
These early multi-media works ranged from large welded litters or stretchers to small welded objects in wood and glass boxes depicting aspects of artefact and ceremony, with a museum-like quality.
“Acutely aware of the formal and aesthetic limitations of his previous sculptural circumstances, Gould was attracted by the functional nature of the Indian imagery, which extended far beyond the decorative to reflect their rites of passage and their fundamental attitudes to life and death, concepts which structured their lives and gave them meaning over and above survival. He was equally attracted to their three dimensional objects, litters, stretchers, beads and jewellery and felt that if these were considered to possess sculptural values and properties, they overcome many of the limitations of their makers' techniques and technologies to master problems of composition, form and truth to materials which beset object sculptors today. He felt also that a contemporary representation of the properties of art of a pre-industrial revolution society in which art and life were inexorably linked would encourage his viewer to consider the relevance of art in his or her life in a refreshing yet historically secure way” (Celia Winter-Irving, “John Gould’s Sculptures", Aspect, ed. Rudi Krausmann, No. 31, Winter 1984).“John Gould takes wood, wire, steel, sand and glass as tools for play. There is a joy and an obsession in the making of his objects. These he welds, sews, draws and binds. The sculptures range from small, boxed, sandy environments to large steel wall-reliefs, reflecting the culture of the American Indians—their jewellery, tepees, stretchers for the wounded and cremation beds. After a solid training in Canberra, with emphasis on technical proficiency, and then a traineeship with Ron Robertson-Swann, Gould came to Sydney, where he felt the need to change. He chose to explore the culture of the American Indians as the pretext for a new departure in his work. Pre-industrial societies, where art is an integral and necessary part of everyday life, give the artist today a fresh view of the relevance of art and its functions, both physically and spiritually. We no longer live with sculpture as an integrated party of our environment" (Gloria Mundy, “Sculpture fantasy in the playground”, Irving Sculpture Gallery, The Sydney Morning Herald, 1984).
John Gould, Tumble II, 1983, welded steel.
Private collection.
John Gould, The Native’s Return, 1984, welded steel.
Private collection.
My sculpture “A Book of Time” takes its imagery and symbolism from the culture of American Indians after the deprivation of land rights. The sculpture represents an archaeological dig in space and time; it is functionally similar to a book which can be opened and closed. The interior image is repeated twelve times in a state of disintegration, representing the disintegration of a culture and death of a Great Chief—signifying in turn the close of a chapter in time.
John Gould, A Book of Time, 1984, wood, sand, glass, steel, paint (welded, glued, painted, constructed).
Artist’s collection.
“In opening and closing the boxes, the viewer becomes physically involved in the artist’s narration; the use of colour, black and pink, underpins each work’s concern with death and life, the box-like constructions draw the viewer into an appropriation of the symbols of a rich cultural past which are the artist’s private metaphor for his concern with currently related issues. Through opening and closing of the boxes in “Still Life’ and “Book of Time”, the viewer is encouraged to make a judgement from his own temporal precincts of the values of American Indian culture and the issues besetting his own world and the future" (Celia Winter-Irving, “Introduction to Inside Out, an exhibition in association with the Fifth Biennale of Sydney”, Irving Sculpture Gallery, 1984).
My experiences living in Kenya (1986-88), Zimbabwe (1994-97) and China (2001-04) were as pivotal to my development as an artist as the American Indian influence in the early 1980s. The effect of all these offshore influences has been to bring me up against the limitations of manipulating form and materials for their own sake, and to introduce a kind of ‘story-telling’ to my work, but without forsaking the rigorous technical and formal standards of my early training—particularly in construction, design and form. This has been a defining feature of my arts practice.
The move to Kenya in 1986 marked a transition to painting and 2Dx3D multi-media constructions and collage. The move to painting has enabled me to make much greater use of colour, light and texture in conveying the texture and ambience of a place. In Nairobi, I developed a particular technique which I have used extensively in my Africa and China series. I use pen and ink in a range of colours with shellac to create fine lines to produce an image. This takes many hours to produce. I then use a sepia-tone wash which adheres to the paper but not to the image thus creating a richness of colour. This is similar to a wax resistant technique and the effect is not unlike an etching or tapestry. The works are highly structured and detailed.
John Gould, Baobab tree, 1988, paper, pen & ink, paint, gold leaf, sepia tone wash.
Private collection.
John Gould, Zanzibar (from the window), 1988, paper, pen & ink, paint, gold leaf, sepia tone wash.
Private collection.
John Gould, Letter from Zanzibar, 1990, paper, pen & ink, paint, gold leaf.
Private collection.
Collectively, my Africa works are a visual notebook and witness to the vivid peoples, art forms, textiles, street scenes, colours, landscapes and architecture I encountered in my travels, particularly but not exclusively on the Swaheli Coast (Dar Es Salaam, Zanzibar, Mombasa, Lamu and Mogadishu). East Africa is a particularly eclectic mix of Swaheli, Arab, Indian and Portuguese history and influences. I sought to represent this in my paintings through a technique of layering of images and collage.
“John Gould’s large group of 60 works on paper are the product of his past two years in Nairobi, Kenya. The folk craft and artforms which he encountered are interwoven in his finely constructed abstractions… In some, he has created beautiful vertical and horizontal patterns, in others grids of geometric forms. In many, his ground of brown paper would physically relate to the source of his imagery: masks, architectural facades and the landscape” (Sonia Barron, review of “The African Collection: Works on Paper 1986-89”, The Canberra Times, 25 August 1989).“In his series of 33 paintings on his travels in East Africa, he sends messages in code about the spirits of places that he has seen (but for us to translate)… In the same way that Paul Klee talked of a painting being ‘built up piece by piece, no different from a house’, John Gould presents Klee-like layers of information in his works which we need to decipher to unravel the story. The Scheherazade effect of Gould’s work is one of superimposed image on image, story on story, encounter on encounter. ‘Zanzibar (from the window)’ is a story where calligraphic images are superimposed on pictorial rendering adding texture and mystery to the final work… In ‘The King’ we have a choice of images each interconnected in iconographic dependence and the choice is ours to decipher the meanings, messages and juxtapositions of visual forms presented. In the way that Georges Rouault has been described as ‘an artist depositing incongruous icons in our social wilderness’, Gould shows us assembled messages from another land, another place and another time… John Gould’s interest in texture is very evident in a number of his works where layers of information are presented with Kurt Schwitter’s like ingenuity... The way in which the collage images are blended into the picture plane and the subsequent jewel like and iconographic methods which are employed in the individual items, provide elements of similarity to the work of decorative artist Gustav Klimt” (Ian Henderson, review of "Icons, Gods, Kings & Idols", The New England Times, 2 July 1991).
“The work is full of journeys, idols, kings and pagan gods, emblematic icons which bear witness to the artist’s experiences in Australia, Europe and East Africa, but constantly crossing cultural barriers and exploring journeys both in physical space and in time… He adopts a symbolic emblematic language strong on surface, pattern and ornamental design” (Sasha Grishin, review of "The Metagenesis Collection: Historical Notations“, The Canberra Times, 7 October 1992). “His miniature assemblages, intricately stitched together with immaculate gilded and burnished surfaces, reminded me not so much of sculpture, in which the artist originally trained, but the jeweller’s art. The use of collage and the constant desire to integrate into the fabric of the work found objects from the environment described, enhance the quality of immediacy… John Gould’s little windows on memory exercise their own unique sense of magic. While conceived as personal narratives, they have the power to refer to a bigger discourse, something to do with a modern miracle in an ancient land (Sasha Grishin, review of "Sojourners II", The Canberra Times, 2 June 1998).
The opportunity to live in Beijing from 2001-2004 marked a new phase in my work inspired by the immense history and dynamism of China, particularly the juxtaposition of the old and the new. I produced a series of topographical maps of Beijing, inspired by long bicycle rides, in which old Beijing is revealed beneath the surface of the modern city. The artifacts, carpets, textiles, ceramics and sculptures of China were a source of rich inspiration for my China series of paintings and multi-media works. Unfortunately I have few images of my artworks to share from this period, due to a lack of photographs of many original works.
John Gould, The Heavenly Guardians, 2003, paper, pen & ink, sepia tone wash. Private collection.
Limited edition prints made.
John Gould, Pingyao, 2002,
paper, pen & ink, sepia tone wash.
Private collection.
“Technically, you could call my style a multi-media mix of the 3D and semi-abstract. My 3D work is partly about illusions which start with the physical fact of a viewer looking at, say, one of my topographical maps of Beijing. The roads it contains are designed to draw the viewer into the environment and find aspects of fact and fantasy. As with my early sculptures, my 3D paintings are hands-on, tactile, a medium I can manipulate which, I guess, comes from my sculpting days… I think it was the great Henry Moore who said that all painters should first train as sculptors to learn true form, and he was right” (Les Charlton, “An Artist Who Knows His Place”, Beijing This Month, December 2002).
The landscapes of Papua New Guinea took my painting in new directions. From the Highlands to the coast, the fjords of Tufi, the New Guinea Islands and Rabaul—in the shadow of the smoking volcano—the landscapes of PNG are extraordinary. I used colour, paint and canvas on a bigger scale and the work was freer in form, reflecting the raw energy and physical beauty of the environment. In “Rain Spirits”, for example I have captured the moment when the rains come and are about to bring the barren landscape back to life and colour. The rain is sinking into the soil for rejuvenation and re-birth.
John Gould, Rain Spirits, 2011, acrylic on canvas. Private collection.
John Gould, Gunfire over the Owen Stanleys, 2010, acrylic on canvas. Private collection.
John Gould, Melanesian Navigational Chart, 2010, wood, cardboard, string, glue, beads, acrylic on canvas.
Private collection.
John Gould, Remembering the Macdhui, 2011, wood, string, acrylic on canvas. Private collection.
John Gould, Houseboat, 2021, mixed media. Private collection.
In “Gunfire over the Owen Stanleys”, I can hear and see the gunfire over the Owen Stanleys during World War II—the cracking sound of gunfire and the tracer fire lighting up the sky expressed in paint.
From my studio window in Port Moresby, I had a birds-eye view of the harbour and ships coming and going. I was fascinated by the range of traditional vessels still used for festivals and everyday travel around PNG’s coastal and island regions. These included outrigger canoes, large multi-hulled sailing canoes known as ‘lakatoi’ used for trade, and vessels carrying sea nomads—all inherently sculptural.
The inspiration for “Melanesian Navigational Chart” was the stick charts made and used by traditional Pacific navigators to identify currents and wave patterns around islands and atolls. Sticks were used to show potential routes, but the form and interpretation of the stick charts were not fixed and their exact meaning was known only to the makers. There was an intriguing element of secrecy about the knowledge they contained. This left me free as an artist to experiment with structure, design, colour and form, paying homage to the remarkable skills of the Pacific boat-makers and navigators.
Another work, “Remembering the Macdhui” shows the skeletal remains of an Australian military transport ship that was sunk in 1942 in Port Moresby’s Fairfax Harbour. It honours the crew and their rescuers.
I remain intrigued by what the found object or artefact, such as the stick charts, tells us about the culture and anthropological history of a place and of its people. But at the same time, the object has an aesthetic and value of its own. I would describe this as a coming together of aesthetic and meaning or visual story-telling.
Traditional arts of PNG are internationally acknowledged and collected by galleries all over the world, but to me art encompasses not just masks and carvings, but the weave of more utilitarian thatches and walls, of fish traps and baskets. Such forms and patterns can also be seen in my work.
Back in Australia, my continuing fascination with Pacific navigational aids and vessels was seen in my exhibition “Sojourns” at M16 Artspace (2016) and recent “Pacific Navigators” exhibition of painted multi-media 3Dx2D constructions on canvas at Strathnairn Arts in Canberra (2023).
"Pacific Navigators" was the third exhibition where I showed work inspired by PNG and the Pacific and the conclusion of a trilogy. Other works in the Strathnairn exhibition were paintings of rivers, islands and villages. Key themes are the different modes of sea travel between the Pacific islands and the inter-relationship between humans and the natural environment.
I have also produced work on the themes of the Australian environment and animal habitats. My painting “Sacred River” (2009) and the multi-media installation “Random Selection” shown at the Tuggeranong Arts Centre and M16 Artspace are examples of this. Both are constructed like a book where the pages open out. Moving forward, I see my work as being increasingly about our relationship with the natural environment and climate change.
"Mr Gould said 'Sacred River' was part of a series of art works he was creating. ‘It’s a series of pictures that I’m doing with rivers, this one being imaginary. The others that I’m doing are real rivers, so this was the first of the series, and in a way it’s sort of like it’s tracing the history of a river for maybe 2000 years’. Mr Gould said the work had historical perspective and hence an inference to the Indigenous world. ‘I work with Indigenous Australians in Queanbeyan, I work with the elders in Queanbeyan and so we talk about the history of our land and what it means to me and to them. This is an imaginary river, but an imaginary river is, in a sense, the river of the journey of where something goes. It’s also the course of something that is tangible like a river, it’s the two things that sort of work together and it’s the way that it sort of meanders through the landscape. It’s different, it’s imaginative. I think that I’m asking people to look at it and to draw their own conclusion at what a sacred river means to them. It’s the depth that I love and the putting down of colours that are reflective of the Australian landscape’. Mr Gould said he first constructed the artwork as a book which could be folded open, and said the works which would follow would be much larger” (“Community nominates imaginary river”, Southside Chronicle (ACT), 16 June 2009).
John Gould, Random Selection, 2017, mixed media
(photograph: M16 Artspace). Artist's collection.
John Gould, Sacred River, 2009, mixed media. Private collection.