Art review: Tim Johnson's The view from Mount Meru at Nancy Sever Gallery

The word "unique" should be banned in art criticism. Nothing is unique in the precise meaning of the word and each artist draws on the traditions of art history and other artists' marks.

However, when we turn to the art of Tim Johnson, it is difficult to find a parallel with any other artist's work, even though individual elements in his art have a recognisable etymology. What is peculiar to his art is the manner in which all of these elements have been brought together. Johnson, over several decades, has created a peculiar and inimitable pictorial language where, within a shimmering sea of tiny dots reminiscent of central desert painting, figures and emblems from many different cultures and cosmologies are inserted.

Images from Buddhist iconography rub shoulders with UFOs, the Aboriginal Dreamtime creation stories, Vincent van Gogh, angelic cherubs, Bob Dylan and cartoon characters; all are crowded into this continuous sea of vision. Positioning himself on the summit of Mount Meru – the sacred, mythical five-peaked mountain of Hindu and Buddhist cosmology which is at the centre of all physical and metaphysical universes – Johnson brings together all of the elements that excite his imagination. From Mount Meru, he feels that he can unify harmoniously all of the known religions of the world together with those that are yet to be discovered.

Johnson is also a serial collaborator and this exhibition includes examples from the work of his long-term collaborators Daniel Bogunovic and Karma Phuntsok. Collaboration in some ways erodes the authority of the dictatorial voice of the artist as genius creator in the same way as a plethora of religions subverts the dominating voice of any single creed.

Johnson, with a very broad dragnet, dredges the cultural and spiritual landscape and displays the spoils within his gossamer-like mesh of finely scattered dots executed with acrylic paints on canvas. One result of this approach to art making is that a certain sameness prevails throughout his prolific oeuvre and, having viewed many of his exhibitions, many of his canvases merge into a continuous diary-like vision.

Memorable pieces in this exhibition include Green Mount Meru (2018), Dolma 1 (2013-18) – a collaborative piece with Karma Phuntsok – and Between the lines (2018). Picking a few of the more resolved and better executed paintings out of a continuous field of production somewhat distorts the process. Throughout his art, Johnson is essentially involved in painting the same picture, but with endless and spectacular variations.

The great Anglo-Australian artist Ian Fairweather spent much of his life working on a translation from the Chinese of The Drunken Buddha, which he finally published with his own illustrations in 1965. In Fairweather's translation, one passage reads: "To the seeing eye – the multiplicity of things are all contained beneath a single thatch within a single house." Like Fairweather, Tim Johnson seeks to express the most ecumenical of all artistic visions united by a common thread of universal meaning and spirit. His art celebrates an underlying belief that all ethical systems can be reconciled – whether Christian, Aboriginal or Buddhist – and that there is a continuity in all life forces.