Peter Maloney
FACE TO FACE, 2021
acrylic and rust base on paper
73 x 56 cm

Artist statement

I have recurring bad dreams, in which I’m being physically attacked. I’m aware that this drama is occurring at both a conscious and a sub-conscious level. 

As a visual artist, my method of documenting, and seeking to understand this serial phenomenon, is to draw and paint my memories of these dreams. FACE TO FACE 2021 relates to a series of 2019 drawings titled Museum of Lunacy that arose from a traumatic hospital stay earlier the same year. The contorted ‘face’ in this drawing confronts the viewer head on in a similar way to how I had to confront these memories.

Artist bio

Peter Maloney’s works extend across a wide range of media, working through abstraction and photo montage throughout his career. Just as Peter made important images of the HIV epidemic in the 80s and 90s, his works are now a personal narrative and thus poignant as he brings the prowess of a long career and a subject of human reality to these works.

Maloney's current work is an accumulation of his artistic practice relating to Australia’s social history as well as his own, continuing his ongoing dialogue with abstraction and the intangible. The seemingly spontaneous and expressive line works are in fact deeply focused and meticulously drawn, sometimes involving text.

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