Author: Tony Oates, Hester Gascoigne, Mark BaylyIn this publication the art of Richard Larter, Pat Larter and Peter Maloney is unearthed in reproductions and three complimentary texts from Tony Oates, Hester Gascoigne and Mark Bayly. What emerges is a picture of Canberran visual culture that challenges the image of a stuffy national capital devoid of radical action. In its place we see a revolutionary community of like-minds hell bent on freedom, fairness and fun.Tony Oates delves into the leftist libertarian ethos that drove Richard Larter through the nitty gritty of his politically powerful pop imagery to his luminous abstraction, suggestive of universal truths. Here, Larter, so often regarded as the founding father of Australian Pop art, is revealed to be so much more. In Hester Gascoigne’s essay the work of husband faces off against the work of wife. Gascoigne traces the weaving threads of Pat’s and Richard’s practices as they merged and diverged over the years, from collaborative to competitive, always with an effervescent cheekiness and fierce dedication to the other. In conversation with Oates, Mark Bayly offers up personal reflections on the life and art of his late partner Peter Maloney with particular focus on the fertile relationship he shared with the Larters. ISBN 9780645488388. Drill Hall Publishing. pb. 96 pages. 17 x 24 cm.available
