Deb Malor
Folding The Map (2025)
Watercolour and graphite on board
30.5 x 23.00 x 2.54cm

Each map publisher folds their maps in a specific way. To care for a map requires knowing its embedded process, the precise nature of the designers' intentions: knowing whether to fold in half, in thirds, in quarters first; then laterally or longitudinally; that the final fold will be front to back, the name, number and scale at the fold; the publishing information verso. Although it seems to have been born folded. in truth, the map rolled off a press as a sheet of paper -- flat. Over many years, I developed a body memory of map folding which I still carry with me. I watched other people attempt to do the same ... they were not always successful. This image captures that moment between flat and folded, between recalcitrant material and the promise of information, between obsolescence and challenge.

Deb Malor returned to making after a four-decade break, during which she worked with things that now contribute to her art: cartographies, ecologies, land divisions, histories, watercourses, other people's images. Book-ending these excursions into employment was study at the National Art School (Newcastle and Sydney) in the 1960s and at the University of Sydney in the 1980s and 90s. Later still, there was an odd post-retirement excursion at the University of Tasmania, Launceston, which revived her studio practice. In creating an artwork, Deb uses old-school map-making materials such as watercolour and graphite, or inks made from foraged materials linked to a specific site, each referencing colours and techniques of significance in traditional topographic and cadastral mapping. Deb has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Tasmania and New South Wales, as well as solo exhibitions in Tasmania. She currently lives and practices in Armidale, New South Wales.

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