Malcolm (Mal) Meninga AM (b. 1960) is one of Australia’s most lauded rugby league players. A descendant of Melanesian people coerced into labouring in Queensland in the late 1800s, Meninga made his professional rugby league debut in Brisbane at eighteen. First selected for Queensland at nineteen, he played in the Maroons squad that won the inaugural State of Origin fixture against New South Wales in 1980, scoring seven goals from seven attempts. He went on to play in 32 State of Origin contests, amassing 161 points. He was a member of the ‘Invincibles’ side which won all 22 tour matches, including five tests, in its 1982 tour of Great Britain and France. In all, he represented Australia on 86 occasions, including in 46 tests, 23 of these as captain. Meanwhile, he worked as a police officer and played five seasons in the Queensland first grade competition before joining the Canberra Raiders in 1986. After a series of injuries, he captained the Raiders to premiership victories in 1989 (the club’s first) and 1990, finishing the 1990 season as the league’s leading point scorer. He last appeared for the Raiders in their victorious 1994 grand final, and went on to become the team’s coach in 1997. Appointed coach of the Queensland State of Origin side in late 2005, he led them to an unprecedented eight consecutive series wins (2006–2013) before departing to coach the Kangaroos in 2015. To date, Meninga is the only player to have been selected for four consecutive Kangaroos tours (1982, 1986, 1990, and 1992). He was the Dally M Player of the Year in 1989, 1990 and 1992. Meninga’s many other honours include inductions into the Sports Australia Hall of Fame (1994); the Australian Rugby League Hall of Fame (2003); and inclusion in both the Australian and Queensland Teams of the Century. As of 2018, he is one of only thirteen players to have been named as an Immortal, the honour bestowed on Australian Rugby League’s greatest ever players.
Peter Hudson
‘Painting a portrait of a popular public figure brings an enormous responsibility. Mal is a positive, forward-looking, successful man. A sense of this is what I wanted to get with this portrait. Although he is a Rugby League living legend, I wanted to avoid making a football painting; however, I’m a proud Queenslander, and so is Mal, and he played in, and later coached the Queensland Maroons to nine State of Origin victories. I have referenced those wins to balance the right hand side of the painting. So I guess it’s a football painting after all.’
Peter Hudson (b. 1950), is a landscape and portrait painter who lives and works in Maleny, Queensland. Since the late 1990s he has explored aspects of the natural world, astronomy, mythology, and history to investigate ‘the deep mystery of existence and us being here’. In 1998, he made the first of many trips to the Aboriginal communities of Daguragu and Kalkarinji in Gurindji country in the Northern Territory. The Gurindji people, their land, and the story of the Wave Hill walk-off have been major influences on his work, and led him to his current interest in portraiture. He illustrated the children’s book of the 2008 song by Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody, ‘From Little Things, Big Things Grow’, making portraits of Kelly and Carmody as well; one of his portraits of Kelly was a finalist in the 2007 Archibald Prize. Since then he has illustrated the books of Shane Howard’s song ‘Solid Rock’, making a portrait of Howard along the way, and Neil Murray’s ‘My Island Home’. Hudson exhibits regularly, has won a number of regional art prizes, and is represented in the collections of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and Parliament House, Brisbane, among others. The National Portrait Gallery holds his portraits of Kev Carmody, Archie Roach, Neil Murray and Chad Morgan.
Commissioned with funds provided by Maliganis Edwards Johnson and Alan Dodge AM 2018
