Richard Maloy
Cardboard Structure, City Gallery Wellington, 2010, Cardboard, masking tape, paint. Image courtesy of the artist and City Gallery Wellington.
This series, documentation of Richard Maloy’s cardboard constructions works brings together for the first time this ongoing body of work. Maloy first started working with cardboard and making large scale temporal constructions in the early 2000’s as part of his studio research for his Master’s in Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. Included in this selection of documentation is the first public art gallery iteration Raw Attempts, 2009-10, exhibited at Artspace Auckland. Also included is the largest and most monumental iteration Big Yellow, 2012, at the Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane and his most recent iteration Yellow Structure, 2019, exhibited at Artetage Museum of Modern Art, Vladivostok.
Yellow Structure, Artetage Museum of Modern Art, Vladivostok, 2019, Cardboard, masking tape, paint. Image courtesy of the artist.
Maloy’s cardboard constructions are typically large sculptural forms developed by the artist in response to a set of self-imposed material and production restrictions, which in turn respond to the physical site and its relationship to audience engagement. The viewers see first-hand the structure as it shifts, changes and develops through its building process, giving the viewer insight into the artist’s making process. If not directly engaging in the making process, they encounter it as a type of temporal architectural space, with a set or stage-like presence. The ongoing series departs from the traditional trajectory of building to a polished finale on opening night, instead the works reveal themselves to us again and again, as if in a constant state of flux. The series has evolved over time with each new assemblage in conversation with the last. The moment of encounter by an audience might occur at any point in the shifting evolution of the work, providing a reading which can only ever be provisional rather than absolute.
Blue Structure, Tauranga Art Gallery, 2017, Cardboard, masking tape, paint. Image courtesy of the artist and Tauranga Art Gallery.
In reference to Raw Attempts exhibited at Artspace Auckland in 2009-10, the then Director Emma Bugden wrote; ‘the work flip-flops somewhere between sculpture, installation and performance. Maloy’s work exudes a type of tactility created through a pared back playfulness which highlights the formal qualities of the informal materials he deploys. The materials Maloy employs are the pedestrian matter which surrounds us, in his hands they are liberated from utility and given free rein; folded, bent, piled up, cut, joined and added to. Even when presented in the most minimal methods of display they retain an odd type of suggestive perversity.’
Bugden, Emma. (exhibition text for Raw Attempts Artspace, Auckland, 2009)
Green Structure, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2011, Cardboard, masking tape, paint. Image courtesy of the artist and Gertrude Contemporary.
Raw Attempts, Artspace, Auckland 2009-10, Cardboard, masking tape, paint. Image courtesy of the artist and Artspace.
Raw Attempts, Artspace, Auckland 2009-10, Cardboard, masking tape, paint. Image courtesy of the artist and Artspace.
Yellow Structure, Encounters Art Basel Hong Kong, 2016, Cardboard, masking tape, paint. Image courtesy of the artist.
Big Yellow, 2012, Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. Cardboard, masking tape, paint. Image courtesy of the artist and Queensland Art Gallery Gallery of Modern Art.
Big Yellow, 2012, Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. Cardboard, masking tape, paint. Image courtesy of the artist and Queensland Art Gallery Gallery of Modern Art.
Richard Maloy employs a multi-disciplinary practice working across photography, installation and video with performativity and process as central ideologies to his practice. He received an MFA from Elam School of Fine Arts University of Auckland in 2001.
Maloy has exhibited in many significant exhibitions including; Encounters, the curated section of Art Basel Hong Kong, 2016; Precarious Balance, the reopening exhibition of Center of Contemporary Art Christchurch, 2016; Freedom Farmers, a survey show of contemporary New Zealand art at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2013; Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2012. Maloy has completed residencies at Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo, 2017; Headlands Center of the Arts, San Francisco, 2010, where he travelled on a Fulbright Scholarship; Artspace Sydney, 2009. Richard Maloy is represented by Stark White Gallery, Auckland.