UNTIL 14.12.24

Curated By Mark Bayly

The UNHINGED project opens a conversation dealing with aspects of the close personal and working relationship between two of the Canberra region’s most senior artists, Richard Larter and Peter Maloney. In doing so, the exhibition examines each artist’s relationship with individual models in serial fashion. Larter became a close friend and ally to Maloney after the latter provided his strong support to Richard’s wife and collaborator, Pat, when she initiated an independent art practice following decades of working closely with Richard as his partner. Each of the three artists worked closely with carefully selected models to follow distinctly different conceptual journeys of discovery.

The exhibition title, ‘UNHINGED’, refers to the virtual genius for cultural subversion and transgression that both Richard Larter and Peter Maloney enjoyed, and which consequently flourished in their individual practices. The idea of being ‘unhinged’ speaks equally to the ways in which the lives of these two artists were closely connected, yet the individual modes of artistic expression of each remained quite separate. The ways in which individual models became central to the practices of both Larter and Maloney is the focus of the conversational model behind this exhibition. Yet, conversations aren’t possible without language, and the dialogue inherent in conversations moves back and forth between speaker, interlocutor, and back again, one after the other. This remains an incontrovertible truth about human communication. 

Download catalogue and curatorial essay [PDF]

The estates of Richard Larter and Peter Maloney are represented by Utopia Art Sydney.