ABOUT JOHN
John Allen works with roots from fallen pohutukawa trees. Iconic to New Zealand’s coasts, they grow in dramatic defiance of gravity and exposure in dramatic cliff-side zones. Pohutukawa roots grow through and around rocks – in a seeming harsh struggle for survival – but whose contortions, when you see them in broad daylight, manifest as effortless grace.
In the studio, John does not seek to impose ideas or correct these forms, but to listen to them – to respond to the gestures the roots already carry, to the life force still present. Sculpting becomes a form of attunement – removing noise – to uncover what is present but not yet fully seen. Accessing aliveness.
John Allen has been working with wood for more than fifty years, from boyhood, sculpting pieces from New Zealand native timbers.
Having followed a career path in the corporate world, around the year 2000, feeling a deep unease and inner knowing to be more in tune with changes happening in the world, John threw himself into his inner journey. A deep dark dive! This revealed new priorities for how to be in the world, and helped seed the opening into his sculpture practice in the last two decades.
John Allen's sculpture is held in private collections spanning New Zealand, Australia, USA and Europe.
Sculpture is available by commission.
John’s sculpting process has been inspired by architect and design theorist Christopher Alexander, who pioneered an approach to creating life and wholeness in art and architecture. Using Alexander’s fifteen design attributes John’s process is a meditative enquiry in which the attributes are focal points for the amount of life and wholeness present.
John studied business and art history at university. He is strongly influenced by the work of Constantin Brancusi, Barbara Hepworth, Isamu Noguchi, Vincent Van Gogh and Alexander Calder. Current significant influences in terms of modern philosophy are Zach H. Evans, Iain McGilchrist and Charles Eisenstein.
Japanese design aesthetics are present for John when he is sculpting - in particular wabi-sabi, as much of the wood John uses has natural imperfection and the effects of ageing; and yugen, a sense of profound grace, a crucial element in the feeling of wholeness.
John is of Celtic, English and Samoan decent.
POHUTUKAWA
