The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

Richard Maloy’s Big Yellow 2012 challenges the art-viewing experience, emphasising unspoken connections between the artist, the audience and art. The following text was developed in conversation with the artist in advance of the work’s construction. Although art works are commonly experienced within a gallery, Big Yellow , shining like a beacon, is also visible from outside. Encased behind a wall of glass in GOMA’s River Room, Big Yellow is first encountered by many from a distance — while crossing the Kurilpa Bridge, or strolling the Brisbane River boardwalk. This perspective — being outside, looking in — similarly reflects Maloy’s approach to art making: the artist uses his position to question art’s relationship to the viewer. Big Yellow is a massive cardboard construction. But is it an immersive experience or a discrete object? Maloy’s work is not media specific; he experiments with a diverse range of media to explore the limits of these art forms, rather than attempting to master any individual technique. Big Yellow could be described as a sculpture, and yet it exhibits nothing of the solidity or permanence we might usually associate with this medium. In spite of this, the artist uses other means to connect the physical and material form of his art with the audience. This connection is often established through Maloy’s use of performance-based strategies, which literally ‘inhabit’ his art. In Tree house 2004 he hosted sleepovers with gallery patrons; for Raw Attempts 2009 Maloy worked every night over the course of his exhibition to create a large cardboard structure that turned ‘the constructs of the gallery and process of art making in on itself’ as he put it. 1 In this way, Raw Attempts was like an extended install; although the build and construction usually precedes an exhibition, in this work this process continued over the span of the show. During gallery hours visitors could witness the artist’s accumulated productivity. Could Big Yellow also be read as a post-performative object — a document of artistic labour or an embodiment of space? Or does it require the viewer to activate the work? As we approach Big Yellow we become more aware of our bodies in connection to the space it occupies. The structure is wedged into the gallery and creates a physical blockage; there is little room to navigate its perimeter. Should we enter? There is a sense that something is about to happen. The scale and material dominance of the work’s cavernous interior removes us from the outside world and becomes a stage set for our imagination. Materiality is central to Maloy’s practice. In this digital age we are driven to question the material conditions of our world, and its relevance beyond its formal qualities. 2 Maloy appears as a cardboard alchemist, transforming this most humble of materials into gold. Is there something transcendent about this work? Will it lead us to enlightenment, greater self-awareness or a higher state of being? Do we seek to connect with something beyond our everyday experience, or hope to find new meaning in the familiar? Maloy’s work engages with the basic process of art making. Do the works from the Pacific in the adjacent spaces alter our reading of the work? And what do they have in common? Perhaps they represent a primary and long-standing belief in the artist as craftsperson. Does the physicality of his work act as a conduit between a conceptual and a more fundamental approach to art making — or are all the works motivated by a similar conceptual premise combined with craftsmanship to realise a series of ideas? In what way does this framing affect the work’s meaning, or is this context irrelevant? In an exhibition that focuses on a geographic region, Maloy’s nationality might also affect the work’s interpretation. Does Big Yellow demonstrate any sense of ‘New Zealand-ness’? Though Maloy references the local through his use of materials sourced locally, he draws from a range of international influences, most visibly performance art of the 1970s. As such, his range of interests and artistic concerns focus on art as ‘an activity and less of a product.’ 3 He references art history as an ongoing progression of art making, a narrative that is continuously being reshaped and reconfigured. Maloy draws on a legacy of institutional critique: his focus is not on the systems for presenting art, rather the process and systems for making it. In 2010 he presented a photographic series of art students’ studio tabletops — the residual markers of artistic labour. From studio to gallery, the examination of artistic production is critical to Maloy’s practice. As an artist he is always questioning on behalf of the viewer: Where is the art? The answer appears to be in the making process of art itself. Andrea Bell 1 Richard Maloy, biography, 2011, <http://richardmaloy.carbonmade. com/about>, viewed June 2012. 2 Peter Robinson, ‘Artist statement’, Biennale of Sydney 2012 , <http://bos18.com/artist?id=91> , viewed June 2012. 3 Bruce Nauman, ‘Identity’, Art21 , PBS, 2001, <http://www.pbs.org/ art21/artists/bruce-nauman>, viewed June 2012. RICHARD MALOY Big Yellow 159