Action and Re-Action: Art Monthly 309

As part of my Critic in Residence gig at ANCA Gallery, I was invited to write an Art Monthly Australasia review of Peter Maloney’s exhibition Missing in Action at the Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra. I went to the opening, where I walked around with my daggy cheap exercise book and took notes. I’ve noticed that when I do this, people come up to me to see what I’m doing. This time, a man started chatting to me as he sipped his free drink. He said that he thought the drawings in the front room were naive. I waited a second to see if he’d add that a child could have done them, but he took another sip. For the first time in a long while, I had a quick and cohesive comeback to his comment. It became the introductory paragraph to my review, which, after a few more visits to the exhibition and chats with the artist, became a very intense writing experience.

I sent in a piece that was almost twice as long as commissioned, and asked the editor to suggest cuts, because I couldn’t kill these darlings. He came back saying that he would publish it in full, in a later issue. It was a lovely surprise and I’m very grateful.

So now it’s an essay: Action and Re-action, Peter Maloney and ‘Missing in Action’, in Issue 309, August 2018.

The only shame is that the piece couldn’t come out before the show finished, but I’m really proud of the work and I’ve had some lovely feedback.

Here’s an excerpt:

There are no titles or even room labels for the drawings, but Maloney has given us a key. In that entry space, as we look at the first works, there is muffled noise coming from behind the far wall, but, like the drawings, the details are only found when you come close. It’s an old tape player, looping through snatches of old answering-machine messages. Chained along the wall are black-and-white photos of men, some from newspaper clippings. All of them have their features dramatically slurred and blurred by released black toner. They’re all dead. Some speak to us on the tape: ‘sorry about my sudden disappearance’; ‘I’m late, always late’; ‘I think your machine cut me off.’ There’s swearing, laughing, a sense of vitality: ‘[laughing] what?! You’re taping me again? I know I’m just source material to you.’ Other messages tell of their passing: ‘Phil passed away, very peacefully’; ‘Rob Gandy died last night.’ There’s a long silence after that one.

The drawings hold their own messages from and about the dead. They evolve over time, from inarticulate slashes to lines that start as an arm movement and end as a word like Killing. Then there are shapes that clearly evoke and echo bodily contact: little deliberate ovalled crayon circles, clear and bright splashes of fluids, finger smears, fingerprints, shoe prints. Then cartoon-like characters with hollow or spiral eyes start to populate the works. The calligraphic lines stay, and become a steady part of his broader practice, but other words become sharper, clearer, punctuating spaces, hovering in corners, playing with thoughts, the music he’s playing, the feels he’s feeling: COLD AS CLAY / ANOTHER ANOTHER ANOTHER / THE TIME BOB WENT / THIS DRAWING CURES AIDS / LESIONS IN <3 / THE CURE! / THERE THERE PETE. He’s talking to the dead as much as to himself.

Art Monthly Australasia can be found in many large newsagents and bookstores, but you can also purchase it directly from the website. Many thanks to AMA editor Michael Fitzgerald, and ANCA Gallery.