Chalk Dogs

CHALK DOGS is a series of multi-layered works created during (and in response to) New Zealand's Covid-19 lockdown between April and June 2020. The project was developed and completed entirely in isolation and explores the blurred lines between inner and outer tensions at a time of unease and uncertainty.

The album is a companion piece to CHALK DOGS HAVE NO NAMES, an exhibition of new works by Neil Johnstone showing at Potocki Paterson Gallery (41-47 Dixon Street, Wellington) from Friday, September 11 to October 25. Click HERE to visit the gallery website and HERE to find out more about Neil and his art.

The pieces were inspired by the daily arrival of tide-washed debris along the shoreline of Wellington beaches. While seemingly random and unrelated, collectively these objects appeared like cryptic signs and messages that spoke to discard, decay, abandonment and collapse.

The resulting compositions are impressionistic subconscious meditations on chance and unpredictability, seclusion and isolation, impermanence and degeneration, surreal and unsettling spaces that suggest a Lynchian and Victorian Grand Guignol underpinned by a sense of loss and quiet despair.

The structural arc of each piece is such that they slowly morph from one point to another in a manner that reflects the transitory nature of all things. Sounds that exist for microseconds - never to be repeated - come and go as everything does, but by capturing and shaping these moments they have become frozen memories of subtly nuanced moments in time. In true surrealist fashion, these sculptural soundscapes subconsciously comment on our shared experience and inevitable mortality in both the broadest and narrowest of ways.