Johns is one of a small number of gay artists who were early activists in New Zealand supporting and advocating for the recognition of the LGBTQ+ community in the arts.
Photographer Rhondda Bosworth was at art school with Johns in the 1970s and recalls it as a time when there was ‘a lively, “alternative” art scene, mostly sited at the down-market suburb of North Beach, involving printmakers, photographers, film-makers and musicians as well as painters and sculptors, makers of books, committed feminists, soft-drug dealers, persons of mixed gender and a prevailing atmosphere of sexual and artistic experimentation.’[4] Soon after leaving art school Johns developed what was to become a signature portrait style.
It included a steel pyramid, a chair, a television case and metronome and still photos taken from films.
[7] The adjudicating Magistrate found that while the John's images of Drummond may have been offensive to some that the defendants were unduly sensitive to nakedness and dismissed the charges.
They constructed a new gallery space for Apple that he left empty for his own exhibition but then invited Johns and Hurrell to use as a gesture of thanks for their assistance.
Johns exhibited photos of the two gallery owners Barbara Brooke and Judith MacFarlane.
[10] In 1986 New Zealand's Parliament passed the Homosexual Law Reform Act decriminalising sexual relations between men aged 16 and over.
Two years later Johns was involved in the ground-breaking CSA exhibition Beyond Four Straight Sides (Homosexual) led by artist Grant Lingard and including three other gay artists Grant Lingard, Trevor Fry and Paul Rayner.
[11] This is believed to be the first time that artists identifying as gay had openly shown together in a public institution in New Zealand.
Better they continue to provoke reaction than become partners in some great soothing art exercise.’[13] Johns has exhibited regularly throughout the following decades.
Johns used the opportunity to photograph around the area of Jerusalem where poet James K. Baxter had spent some time.
It was supported by a street poster campaign and the proceeds from sales were donated to Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd.
[17] In his review Andrew Paul Wood noted the melancholic nature of Johns’ work from his early homoerotic work to what Paul Wood described as, ‘a compassionate response to the marginal and a quasi-mystical yearning for universalism.’[18] In a similar summary, writer Peter Ireland commented on what he saw as Johns’ dual contributions, ‘firstly, he instinctively recognises the memorial power of photographs; and secondly, his conceptual range enables him to transcend the narrower borders of the medium to construct scenarios that not only reinforce commemorative associations but set up poles between which these associations shimmer with a resonance like the humming of telegraph lines.’[19] 1977 Paul Johns, Recent Work C.S.A.
[42] 2008 Spaghetti Junction: Martin Basher, Paul Johns, Eileen Leung, Peter Madden, Sanné Mestrom and Seung Yul Oh (group) 64zero3 Gallery, Christchurch 2009 Brought To Light (group) Christchurch Art Gallery.
[47] 2015 Paul Johns: South Pacific Sanctuary / Peraki / Banks Peninsula Christchurch Art Gallery.
[49] 2018 (May) Look at the Crowd in Swimming Ilam Campus Gallery School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury, Christchurch.
[51] 2021 Listening Stones Jumping Rocks (group) Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi Wellington.
[52] 2003 Reaching Out: Calling New Age Power (group) Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington.