Born in 1952, Kennedy Malin attended Elam School of Fine Arts,
graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1991, before going on to
complete her Master of Arts. Malin was highly regarded as an
educator, tutoring at the Auckland Society of Arts and teaching
painting, drawing and design at the Whitecliffe College of Fine
Arts in Auckland.
Malin's work combined theoretical and painterly concerns in
equal quantities, utilising a variety of media and moving through
expressive, textural and ethereal phases, all of which served to
relate both her influences and her reactions to them.
In her show souvenir tendre, encompassing her
BLISS and POISON series, Malin deliberately
conflated the feminine with ornamentation and detail - a common and
consistent theme in the latter stages of her career. Malin's
work provided a wry
comment on the persistent and pejorative connotations of
ornamentation in art as an emblem of the feminine, which
itself entailed the hysterical and the irrational when held up
against the more composed, cultural and rational maleness of the
tradition 'high art'. Comprising large, looming panels adorned in
highly detailed, decorative patterning with an expressive flourish,
Malin's painting in this show was a tongue-in-cheek response to the
discrimination against the perceived decadence, domesticity and
docility of women painters throughout the history of 'high
art'.
Malin participated in a number of solo and group shows
throughout New Zealand and completed commissions for the Raeburn
Glanfield Private Collection and the Centra Hotel in Auckland.