Born in Te Kopuru, Northland in 1946.
John attended Elam SFA 1965-70.
The latest works by John are closely connected to the issues and themes that have occupied the artist in the past.
These are the public/private issues of sign, shape, narrative, myth, bicultural language and individuation away from traditional painted formats.
These issues are consistent within this new work, and yet there is a point of difference here.
The work in fabrications 04/05 reveals a further degree of abstraction - a single minded and pared – back approach to the development of form and image.
There is a sense of summary whereby previous themes have been consolidated.
The painted forms inhabit the border between sculpture and painting. Nicol’s works are arranged as if on the pages of a book.
They create a language of metaphors where emblems and spaces speak implicitly. The simplicity of these shapes connects the work to children’s story books or indigenous mythmaking.
He has a fine grasp on the semiotics of shape as well as the purity within his depiction of the painted sea and land.
2007 New Works Remuera Gallery, Auckland
2005 Fabrications 04/05 Milford Gallery, Auckland
2002 Fabrications 01/02 Milford Gallery, Auckland
2000 Fabrications Peter Muir Petford Gallery, Auckland
1999 Tree-Like thought & the Desiring Machine Peter Muir Petford Gallery, Auckland
1998 Recent Works Peter Muir Petford Gallery, Auckland
1998 A Lacuna Fisher Gallery [instillation], Pakuranga
NZ rep: AAG, Hocken, J Wallace Col, Rot Mus