Peter Maloney
Over the past half century, Peter Maloney produced a polymorphous body of work across multiple media, including, collage, painting, photography, performance, sound, and video. As a painter, his early commitment to gestural abstraction gave way to a broader practice of genre-defying bafflement. I suggest this, because in examining Maloney's series of works over the past twenty years, I propose that they can best be mentally assembled and appreciated as a wilful puzzle.
Maloney continued to repeat the associated themes of language, text and meaning through his work over the course of his 50-year career. Largely seen as a painter in abstract idioms, much of his work was self-described as 'linear abstraction'. However, in returning to the overarching context of language and meaning, it's virtually impossible not to discern a clear graphic sensibility at work in his practice, including distinct calligraphic, and rhythmic structures supporting his works' compositions. However, in his practice, nothing is quite as it initially appears, and meaning can only be inferred - not taken literally.
Maloney's modes of expression can be understood as vernaculars of the artist's visual lexicon - amply demonstrated in his prodigious output and seen time and again throughout his extensive exhibition history. By not having developed a readily identifiable appearance, or 'brand' associated with his body of work and its visual expression, Maloney possibly risked being misunderstood, or his conceptual intentions misrepresented. Rather than electing for the optics of easy comprehension, he preferred to be visible through the essentially eclectic character of his work and its very distortion. In doing so, he insisted on being identified as different - hybrid - non-prescriptive - queer. His idiosyncratic imagery forms a cryptic, diaristic narrative throughout his career, and Maloney's practice often appears intimate to the point of being private. From his close personal experiences, the artist understood joy, elation, loss and grief, and his familiarity with these extremes of emotional response reflects our own journeys through belief, liminal space, the unconscious, and the unknown.
Mark Bayly
2025
Mark Bayly is an independent curator and writer, with a 30-year career of producing exhibitions in prominent art museums, galleries, and heritage buildings. He and Peter Maloney were partners for 28 years.
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solo exhibitions
group exhibitions