Curatorial Statement | Artist's Résumé

Daniel Malone is a hard artist to pin down. The words which spring to mind to describe him include cultural ethnographer, scavenger, archivist, producer and arranger. Malone is well known for his provocative performance and installation works, where he plays with cultural and social identity. Creating a richly associative recombination of everyday objects, Malone challenges the ways in which language and cultural signifiers are interpreted by his audience.

Jon Bywater, writing about Malone's work, has observed that 'it is out of the flatness of everyday actions that Malone works a kind of precise conceptual origami, folding them together to produce an intricate, multi-faceted whole. The often simple - punning, inverting - but thorough-going inventiveness of his work requires patience to follow, but has a consistency that can only amount to dazzling rigour.'

Malone's exhibition project Mythopoeia - There and Back Again places the recent Lord of the Rings phenomenon under the spotlight, tracking its evolution from Tolkien's attempt to create a truly British mythology through to its reinvention as both a New Zealand and a Hollywood event. Mixing LOTR memorabilia - a role-playing board game, phone cards, stamps and coins - with local films from the archive, this project is as much about the Lord of the Rings' reception, both here and internationally, as it is about the film itself.

Emma Bugden