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ARCHITECTURE A spiritual atmosphere hewn from rock
REVIEW Berlin Art Week: Airport hangars and hidden gems
BAROQU E Rediscovering music within beautiful spaces
€2.00 WHERE SOLD
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INTERVIEW;
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“ We want to make MICAS a place to go to, to visit.... Museums and galleries are dynamic institutions which people should be able – and want – to experience several times a year. And that’s why we need to be pushing boundaries.” – Francis Sultana Interview pg.12
GEORGE MICALLEF EYNAUD
Turner Prize 2018 exhibition installation view, Tate Britain.
‘Mobile’, Oil paint on discarded tyre and metal chain, Gabriel Caruana, 2004 - Private Collection
Olafur Eliasson, Fivefold Cube, 2002, Neugerriemschneider, Berlin Art Week 2018
The Moving Image; A Weapon in the Artist’s Arsenal
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OPINION: The future of museums ART SALES: How will Brexit impact the art world? ART NEWS: Congolese art is eagerly sought-after DESIGN: A major exhibition for the master of Italian design - Achille Castiglioni REVIEW: The final countdown for Valletta 2018 SPOTLIGHT: What characterises the artistic mind? TRAVEL: An intimate rendezvous with Yves Saint Laurent in Marrakesh BOOKS: Richard England releases a new book
t is a disconcerting experience, thinking about the past. With the uneasy clarity that hindsight brings, the emotional dissonance we feel when dwelling on our shared history is far removed from easy nostalgia – indeed, the same problems that our forebears faced seem to be all too present with us today, woven insidiously within the fabric of human nature. >> Pg.30
A Global Force in Trade Finance www.fimbank.com
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Welcome / Team / Inside Nov – Dec –‘18
Editor-in-Chief Lily Agius (+356) 99292488 Editor Margerita Pulé Creative Director Chris Psaila Sales Manager Samantha Psaila (+356) 77880300 Contributors Lisa Gwen Baldacchino Konrad Buhagiar Julian Cardona Iz Collins Sandro Debono Joanna Delia Richard England Judy Falzon Bruce Micallef Eynaud George Micallef Eynaud Gabriele Spiller Christine Xuereb Seidu Artpaper is owned / produced by Lily Agius and Chris Psaila [ V ] Publications
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am reminded time and time again how I cannot live without art in my life, so much so that having an art gallery and publication is only part of my fix. I don’t watch a lot of television, only documentaries and series related to art, and I cannot bring myself to open a local newspaper too often – opting instead for an international art or design newspaper or magazine or App on my phone. This is the result, apart from me being me, of the tension created by the media and the work of politicians at large. That is not to say that there are no good people in politics, or writers or important news to take note of – but please can someone come out with a ‘good news’ publication? Life is short, and is best spent surrounded by art, artists, designers and all those who create
ART NEWS 06. Award Richard England recognised in Italy 06. New Art Space Studio 87 opens in Valletta 06. New Art Space Arthall opens in Gozo
12. Gallery Closes Malta Contemporary Art bids farewell
Supported by / International Berlin Art Week Christies, London Fimbank La Triennale di Milano Mahalla Festival Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Marrakesh MutualArt.com Nicolas Van Patrick, London Soho Radio, London Sotheby’s, London Taschen Tate Britain Turner Prize 2018 La Biennale di Venezia Vitra
DESIGN + TRAVEL 07. Vitra Charles & Ray Eames ‘married’ music to films
27. What’s On Visual art events in Malta 29. International Events A selection of exhibitions + fairs 36. Art Market Post-war and contemporary art sales
BOOKS + ARCHITECTURE 13. Renaissance Man Richard England launches his new book 16. Troglodytic Armenia + Malta The Nature of troglodytic Architecture 39. Book / Travel Sketchbook The stunning sketchbooks of Francoise Gilot
15. Exhibition A master of Italian design: Achille Castiglione 18. Malta Malta Design Week: A highlight for the cultural calendar 24. Marakesh At the colourful Yves Saint Laurent Museum
REVIEWS 30. Turner Prize Film - this year’s medium of choice 32. Berlin Art Week Fairs, sales and beauty 36. Valletta 2018 The final countdown
OPINION 08. Museums What the future holds 23. Feature The mind of an artist 35. Brexit How will it impact the art world?
SPOTLIGHT + INTERVIEWS 09. Venice Biennale Who’s representing Malta in 2019 35. Eye on Africa A Congolese resurgence 05. On the Scene Headlines from the art world
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My striving for harmony and results – a difficult part of my nature in this abrupt and fast-paced world of ours – keeps me going. It is also something I continue to pursue, whilst artists continue to feel alone in their wish to feel part of an art world at large and be recognised for their talents. I will always believe that there is something truly unique about Maltese artists and they are also
11. Exhibition The evolution of Willie Apap 11. Art Festival Mahalla comes to Malta
Supported by / Malta AP Arts Council Malta Blitz Campari Christine X Gallery Gabriel Caruana Foundation Heritage Malta Iniala 5 Galleries Joinwell La Bottega – Art Bistro Malta School of Art Malta Society of Arts Malta Tourism Authority Manoel Theatre Malta Design Week MICAS Palazzo Falson People & Skin Spazju Kreattiv University of Malta Vamp Magazine Vee Gee Bee Art Shop Victor Pasmore Gallery Vivendo
a better looking and functioning world. This is, however, where politics and creativity can – and do – merge. Creative collaborations do exist and have finally started to take sway in Malta. Since working in the arts in Malta in 2004, fresh out of university, the scene was embryonic and exciting – so much so that I continued to promote and organise exhibitions for then unknown artists as well as our ‘big names’ with the aim of bringing everyone together.
Winners of from previous issue (1) Melanie Erixon has won a year-pass to all Heritage sites from Heritage Malta and (2) Ella Vassallo a €20 voucher from VeeGeeBee Art Shop.
strong-willed and adaptable – the perfect ingredients for making their mark. Call me a dreamer, perhaps, but my dream has been coming true over the years – on a personal level as well as a whole for this country. Whether we like it or not, Malta’s booming economy is no doubt going to help the Maltese art scene and market get off the ground. When it comes to art sales, it’s a buyers’ market but we need to attract the buyers. Most artists do an irrelevant job as well as create their art in their free time – or go abroad in the hope they won’t have to – but perhaps this will soon change and their real value will be acknowledged at home.
Competition by Bruce Eynaud Go Figure! Can you guess any of the 3 artworks that make up this figure? Send your answers by email to info@artpaper.press by 28 December, with ‘Competition’ as the subject, for a chance to win: First Prize: A year-pass to all heritage sites from Heritage Malta
Second Prize: €20 voucher from VeeGeeBee Art Shop
St Julians BOSS Store, Ross Street Malta International Airport BOSS Store, Departures Lounge
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Art News / On the Scene Nov – Dec –‘18
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ON the SCENE. “I do not know exactly why, but it seems to me that images do not belong to anybody but are instead there, at the disposal of all.” - Maurizio Cattelan
Banksy shredding story continues Girl with Balloon, which was last year voted the UK’s best-loved work of art, first appeared on a wall in Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch, east London. The 2006 gallery version featured spray paint and acrylic on canvas, mounted on a board. Following a prank by artist Banksy that left the artworld reeling, Sotheby announced that the sale of the partly-shredded Girl with Balloon would go ahead, despite the altered state of the now-infamous artwork. The winning bidder had confirmed her decision to acquire the work, that has now been given the new title of Love is in the Bin for the prices of £1.02m. In yet another twist, Banksy himself appeared to admit that the prank had gone wrong; the shredding machine which had been hidden in the frame of the work was intended to shred the whole piece.
Christie’s to Record Art Sales on a Blockchain Christie’s, the world’s leading art business, announces it will pilot encrypted registration of art transactions on a blockchain this winter, as part of a unique collaboration with Artory, a leading independent digital registry for the art market. In an industry first, each artwork from An American Place: The Barney A. Ebsworth Collection sold at Christie’s this November will include a secure, encrypted certification of the sale for the successful bidder, providing a permanent digital record of relevant information about the artwork. www.christies.com
Bellavista Street San Gwann T: 21385584 · E: art@vgb.com.mt Shop Online www.vgbart.com.mt
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A Design Collaboration in Valletta Local design company Te fit-Tazza have teamed up with Edwards Lowell to design a wall within the new Rolex Boutique store in Valletta, through an introduction by Chris Briffa Architects. The design by creative director Craig Macdonald, depicts the skyline of Valletta, coupled with the inclusion of a sailing yacht in the foreground. The image was inspired by the marriage between cultural heritage and the Rolex Middle Sea Race, which serves to visually highlight the iconic nature of the Rolex Middle Sea Race start, a spectacle that embellishes our beautiful Grand Harbour every year. The design was specially manufactured for the project in Switzerland, using stucco – a new medium for Te fit-Tazza. The Edwards Lowell Rolex Boutique is located on Republic Street in Valletta.
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Edward Hopper, Chop Suey
ATCHITECTURE
BOOKS
REVIEW
DESIGN
ART SALES
SPOTLIGHT
OPINION
ART NEWS
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Art News / New Art Space / Studio 87 Nov – Dec –‘18
Pablo Picasso’s 1922 Guitare, bouteille et compotier was sold recently for a cool € 3,982,500 at a Christie’s auction in Paris at 59% above its official estimate. www.christies.com
ART SALES
Drawings by Gulja Holland are available at Studio 87
VALLETTA
Studio 87 Contributes to Valletta Scene With roof-top pop-ups, environmental collaborations and creative catch-ups, Studio 87 has proven to be a positive addition to the already vibrant Valletta art scene.
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reated by art restorer and curator, Justine Balzan Demajo, in a building once used as a store by her great-aunt, Studio 87 is now an exhibition space and restoration studio.
The space opened with an exhibition of photography by Malta-based Inigo Taylor; and recently held a pop-up event with work by Nadine Noko,
Picky Mouse, Gulja Holland and Saz Mifsud. Not limiting itself to exhibitions, the gallery also hosted a Creative Circuit with Malta Creative Collection, as well as a sustainable supper with environmental NGO Fish4tomorrow. As is the case with many art spaces in Valletta, what was once a neglected and abandoned building, is now a creative and exciting venue.
ITALY
Richard England awarded title Commendatore Dell’Ordine Della Stella D’Italia
Studio 87 is located at Ta’ Liesse Hill, Valletta
GOZO
Arthall opens in Gozo Gozo has become something of an art, craft and design hub of late and a new addition to the gallery scene is Arthall, a gallery for modern and contemporary art, in Victoria. Since the gallery opened in August, it has been exhibiting paintings and sculptures by international artists. Its current exhibition, Triumvirate, runs until the end of the year and shows work by Lindsay Hunt (Australia), Spyke von Stripe (Canada) and Tomas Hed (Sweden), with a combination of metal sculptures, drawings and paintings. With more and more artists choosing to live and work in Gozo, another exhibition space can only be a good thing for artists and visitors alike. Arthall is open on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, 10am - 1 pm & 4 pm - 6pm, and on Sundays 10am – 12 noon. Triumvirate runs until 31 December.
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n 4 October, the Italian Ambassador to Malta – on behalf of The President of the Republic of Italy – conferred the title of Commendatore Dell’Ordine Della Stella D’Italia on Professor Richard England (b. 1937). The honour was awarded to architect Prof England in recognition of his significant contribution to the promotion of Italian culture and the strengthening of relations between Italy and Malta. The Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity was founded as a national order by the first President of the Italian Republic, Enrico De Nicola, in 1947, to recognise civilian and military expatriates or foreigners who made an outstanding contribution to the reconstruction of Italy after World War II.
Design News / Vitra Nov – Dec –‘18 STINE LIV BUUR in collaboration with the Eames Office Photos: ©Eames Office, LLC
DESIGN
How Charles + Ray Eames ‘Married’ Music to Films A Vitra Anecdote
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he mid-century designer duo Charles and Ray Eames took their work very seriously. They worked seven days a week, from morning to evening, over a span of more than three decades. But their work in the Eames Office, located at 901 Washington Boulevard in Venice, California, also involved a great amount of pleasure. The Eameses were what they worked, and they were what they produced - and the type of music they used, and listened to, was what they found most appropriate for the work they produced.
to the talented young composer Elmer Bernstein, with whom they soon developed a warm professional and personal friendship. Over the years of their collaboration, Elmer Bernstein composed more than 30 pieces of music for their films, including Toccata For Toy Trains (1957), Think (1964), Tops (1969) and Powers of Ten (1977). Elmer Bernstein said that the Eameses “married the music to their films”. The music was usually composed before the film was finalised. It was a common procedure for the film to be edited so that it fit the music. Charles and Ray Eames often worked in this way: first they had an idea for a film; then the composer became involved and was introduced to the idea; then he created the music – normally with no interference from Charles and Ray – and finally the film clips were arranged to the rhythm of the music. This was the framework for Elmer Bernstein’s description of how Charles and Ray Eames ‘married’ the music to the film.
Charles and Ray Eames used music mainly for their extensive production of educational films. They liked jazz, for example the Stars of Jazz program, and used jazz music in their films. They also had a taste for folk music from different cultures, as well as classical music – and these types of music were also used in their films. In all aspects of their work, it was natural for Charles and Ray Eames to engage with people or things they could learn from. Their interest in music, and how music could be used in their films, was no exception. They combined film and music as communication tools for their furniture designs, along with educational themes like mathematics, computers, toys, and other topics that had somehow attracted their attention. As designers who were quite experi-
enced with the use of a camera, they approached several musicians throughout their lifetimes to compose music for their films.
A Communications Primer (1953) was the first film to directly include outside consultants, and for its musical score, Charles and Ray Eames turned
“They were what they worked, and they were what they produced” was Elmer Bernstein’s description of the Eameses. He claimed that Charles Eames was the only true genius he ever worked with. He named his second son after Charles Eames – calling him Gregory Eames Bernstein.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Vanishing Valletta Artist photographer David Pisani, known for his precisely proportioned black and white film photography will be exhibiting his work Vanishing Valletta, The Definitive Collection 1982 – 2011. Back in 1982, before the regeneration of Valletta, Pisani spent time documenting the city and the surrounding harbour area. He placed an emphasis on the peripheries of Valletta as well as the infamous red-light district of Strait Street. What started as a photo essay of the then derelict buildings of the city and the dwindling activity in Strait Street, became an extensive documentation project of Valletta spanning almost thirty years. The photographs exhibited are all fine art silver gelatin prints, which Pisani has printed from the original negatives. Vanishing Valletta is on show from 21 December until 27 January at Spazju Kreattiv.
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Opinion / Mediterranean / Museums Nov – Dec –‘18
Sandro Debono is a curator, academic and museum professional based in Malta. He is specialised in heritage policy and collections development, and has published extensively on art history and culture studies. Sandro is currently the project lead for MUZA, the Malta national-community art museum.
Highlights
MEDITERRANEAN
SANDRO DEBONO
Thoughts on Futuring Malta’s Culture Ecology
Liu Jianhua, Square, 2014, Installation view, Venice Biennale 2017
“A re-think regarding regionalisation is one way of reinventing Malta’s cultural identity.”
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hat will the art museum of the future look like and how will it contribute to shaping Malta’s 21st-century cultural identity? These questions become increasingly relevant for Malta – and for Europe in general – as organised religion continues to decline and contemporary societies are increasingly faced with the need for new forms of spirituality.
mean that future collection patterns and trends for public and private art museums can may be less local and much more international. This will also certainly put more pressure on local artists to raise the bar on the artistic output and productions. Some are known to be represented by galleries elsewhere – in Germany for example, but these are the exception. The challenge ahead – for museums and other places of culture in general, is to to pay less regard to the historic and ore to the aesthetic and political.
There is the belief, slowly emerging for now but sure to gain ground in the years to come, that cultural spaces such as concert halls, museums and libraries can serve as the spiritual spaces of this century. This provides just the backdrop to the constant change which contemporary societies are experiencing, as mobility is becoming the norm rather than the exception in many people’s lives, to the extent that many now acknowledge more than one place as home.
A re-think regarding regionalisation is one way of reinventing Malta’s cultural identity. Rather than looking north to the historic centres of art, there are many other areas – especially towards the Maghreb and the Middle East, irrespective of the political turmoil, albeit relatively contained, that still makes the headlines.
This is not an alien scenario to Malta, as the island’s demographics continue to be in constant flux. Maltese society can be understood as cosmopolitan, which has frequently been the case throughout history. Ignoring the existence of a hybrid and multifaceted cultural identity for Malta risks promoting exclusion, especially when connections are now – more than ever before – beyond being just Mediterranean. How do the Maltese define and position themselves in relation to the rest of the world is the question to ask. Acknowledging
cosmopolitanism
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would
certainly
Artists from North Africa and the Middle East rarely feature in local galleries and exhibitions and there may still not be much of a market for their work. South American and Asian art is – as a rule – even less acknowledged. Official art historians continue to acknowledge the southern Mediterranean and the Middle East as being the cultural ‘other’ rather than focusing on the common ground and shared narratives that go beyond the Maltese language. The Biennale in Istanbul – now in its 17th edition – and others in the Middle East have become prestigious platforms often challenging the status quo by inviting controversial curators to deliberately provoke. Indeed, rethinking regionalism – historically understood as a
strong connection with Italy – may be a way forward. Maltese literature has done this, as has music. Paradoxically, art – and its institutions – seemingly continue to avoid or ignore connecting with this part of the world. New challenges require funding opportunities that are still heavily dependent on national funding. The exciting opportunities that bitcoin and digital assets have ushered in can also provide the much-needed funding models for the cultural and creative sector to operate. Malta is at the forefront in cryptocurrency legislation and the huge opportunities that this can bring to its culture ecology are perhaps yet to be acknowledged. The museum and creative sectors worldwide are still observing all this from a distance. Most, particularly those with institutionalised narratives and a top-down approach, might struggle to tap into the much-needed financial support that this emerging sector can bring to the table. In doing so, they could be faced with the challenge of re-thinking management models and moving closer to participatory governance which is already gaining ground. Participatory projects in the arts and creative sector may also be much better equipped to take on the challenges and opportunities of the future. The answers to some of these points may be with us by 2031 when Malta may once again have the title of ‘European Capital of Culture’.
Spotlight / Malta Pavillion / Biennale Nov – Dec –‘18 VENICE
Malta Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia 2019 The project, called Maleth / Haven / Port – Heterotopias of Evocation, focuses on Malta’s role as a cultural centre of the Mediterranean Sea, both historically and in the present day, tackling a subject that is not new to the Maltese contemporary art world, particularly in the context of cultural diplomacy and the internationalisation of the sector. The curatorial and artistic team is composed of lead curator Dr Hesperia Iliadou Suppiej, artists Vince Briffa, Klitsa Antoniou and Trevor Borg and architect-designer Matthew Joseph Casha and following the announcement the team, has spent some time together in Malta during October working on the project. The project will invite audiences to reflect on their own lifetime journey of self-discovery, and their own search for a personal haven or port. Drawing on the
tri-fold of history-archaeology, myth-tradition and vision-expectation, it hopes to create a space conducive to artistic conversation for the whole of the Mediterranean Sea. Audiences will be invited to participate in an intuitive dialogue with the artworks, which will be organically placed within a suggestive, fictitious space of light and sound. With the title May You Live in Interesting Times, the 58th edition of La Biennale di Venezia is curated by Ralph Rugoff. This eponymous phrase of English invention has long been mistakenly cited as an ancient Chinese curse that invokes periods of uncertainty, crisis and turmoil. After a 17-year absence, Malta returned to La Biennale di Venezia in 2017 with Homo Melitensis: An Incomplete Inventory in 19 Chapters, which received international press acclaim. Although the 2019 Malta Pavilion has had a rocky start, its content may yet allow it to rise above the controversy.
Klitsa Antoniou, Atlantropa 6
A Cypriot-Maltese team will represent Malta at the Venice Biennale in 2019. The choice of the 2019 Malta Pavilion was quietly announced by the Arts Council Malta in October, following claims of irregularities during the selection process.
The 58th edition of La Biennale di Venezia will run from 11 May to 24 November 2019.
“ Although the 2019 Malta Pavilion had a rocky start, its content may yet allow it to rise above the controversy.”
Vince Briffa, Outland 4
Trevor Borg, Cave of Darkness - Port of No Return 1
Photos courtesy of Arts Council Malta
Klitsa Antoniou, Atlantropa 9
Klitsa Antoniou
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Art News / Revelations / Mahalla Festival Nov – Dec –‘18 EXHIBITION
ART FESTIVAL
Willie Apap: Revelations
Willie Apap, Clown and Ballerinas, oil on board, 59x39cm, signed and dated, 1965. Private collection, Malta. Photo: Peter Bartolo Parnis
a strong element of purification – or increased spirituality – in his work. It outlines a shift from the exterior to the interior, from the visible realm to that of the inner human condition and, ultimately, to the sacred. Apap’s keen interest in the human figure, face and setting, is shown to undergo a similar transformation: a transfiguration of sorts, shrouded in a thick veil of ambiguity, incompleteness and obscurity.
The temporary exhibition Willie Apap: Revelations, on show at the Annexe of the Central Bank of Malta and the Victor Pasmore Gallery, seeks to trace the moment in the development of the work of Willie Apap when, as his style matured, he moved from painting the surface of the physical world to depicting a deeper, almost spiritual truth. Willie Apap (1918-1970), who lived in Malta and Rome, was one of the foremost Maltese painters of the 20th century. With a varied subject matter, a fluid style and a prestigious clientele, his work and style became more spiritual as it developed. The exhibition explores how this evolution in Apap’s choice of subject matter, form and colour palette revealed
The first part of the exhibition is a textbased photographic walk-through in the Annexe that will lead viewers into the depth of Apap’s artistic formation and philosophy, from his early years to his Italian connections and, ultimately, to his mounting concern regarding the human psyche and spirit. The exhibition then continues with a selected thematic display of Apap’s works at the Victor Pasmore Gallery. Organised by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti in collaboration with the Central Bank of Malta and the Victor Pasmore Foundation, Willie Apap: Revelations is open until 30 November.
Apap’s choice of subject matter, form and colour palette revealed a strong element of purification – or increased spirituality – in his work.
One of the venues for Mahalla in Zabbar
“The exhibition explores the evolution in Apap’s choice of subject matter, form and colour palette”
Visual Arts Festival Comes to Malta
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ahalla, a travelling festival of contemporary art, film and literature, will be in Malta from 18 to 25 November. With several ancillary events running alongside it, the festival will be located in venues in Valletta, Santa Lucija and Zabbar and will allow audiences to explore communities through a variety of lenses.
The title of the festival – Mahalla – comes from the Arabic mähallä, used in many languages and countries, meaning neighbourhood or location. In this context, the word is a metaphor for a space of diversity and inclusion in the field of art and culture. A total of 47 artists, writers and film-makers from 13 countries will address various topics such as language and migration, communities and diversity, new city cultures, mobile citizenship and future demands. Venues include MUZA – Malta’s renovated fine art museum, Valletta Contemporary, Fortress Builders and Studio 87 in Valletta, as well as an impressive palazzo in the heart of Zabbar and the Chinese Gardens in Santa Lucija. The exhibitions will include the Conceptual Mahalla Share-House-Shop, installations, photodocumentaries and interactive items, as well as mini solo-shows by international artists. The first Mahalla Festival was held in Istanbul in 2017 in the frame of the Istanbul Biennial, and the festival is planned to take place in another European city in 2019.
Mark Sagona, Believe, 2018, acrylic on canvas board, 25 x 30cm
PAINTING
The Painted Psyche Gozitan artist Mark Sagona will be presenting his latest work in a solo exhibition, The painted psyche and other narratives 2000-2018. The collection of small abstract works embodies a combination of specific moments in the artist’s state of being during a particular instance in time. Each intensely emotive work contains an aesthetic concern for light, colour and composition, which transmits the concept of deep inner feeling. The exhibition, curated by Nikki Petroni, will be on display at Palazzo de la Salle, Republic St Valletta, from 12 December of this year until 19 January 2019.
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Lisa Gwen Baldacchino holds a first degree in History of Art and a Masters in Cultural Heritage Management. She is a freelance curator and writer for art and design events.
Art News / MICAS / Francis Sultana
Highlights
Nov – Dec –‘18 INTERVIEW
LISA GWEN BALDACCHINO
A Concept for Contemporary Art in Malta “We need to give a little beauty back to our country, and places such as MICAS can help”: Francis Sultana
What makes a cultural ambassador? I remember how, just a few years back, Sir Cliff Richard (in 2011) and British Pop singer Peter Andre (in 2013) were bestowed with such status. Their title was ‘Valletta Cultural Ambassador’ which, according to the mayor of Malta’s capital city, was an award presented to outstanding foreign personalities in view of Valletta’s role as the European Capital of Culture in 2018. In 2012, between these two Knighthoods, tenor Joseph Calleja was given the title of First Cultural Ambassador to Malta. This title immediately possessed more nationality and prestige: Calleja’s new title resonated well with the Maltese. Each of the above roles was assigned to prominent exponents in the field of performing arts, which is perhaps why
Gozo-born, London-based interior designer Francis Sultana has a long list of accolades to his name. And yet his relationship and involvement with the local contemporary art scene can be traced to just a few years back. Perhaps he shot to attention for being instrumental in securing Malta’s comeback to the Venice Biennale in 2017. In any event, since then his active role in the major cultural-infrastructural project known as MICAS – Malta International Contemporary Art Space – has seen the AD100 designer become a recognised and respected name in the ever-increasing art circles in Malta and beyond.
glint in his eye that immediately reveals his enthusiasm and passion for the project. “Museums and galleries are dynamic institutions which people should be able – and want – to experience several times a year. And that’s why we need to be pushing boundaries.” Francis walks me through the ambitious weekend-long programme painstakingly organised by the team for the MICAS concept launch that was held between 12-13 October. “We are building a programme. We are, at present, a museum without a building so we wanted to start by working on projects. When we began planning the launch, we looked at archaic sculptures dating back to BC and that’s why Ugo Rondinone was such a great match.”
Francis also reveals how he is “trying to push for more philanthropy for the arts, by adopting the same techniques used in London. We need to give a little beauty back to our country, and places such as MICAS can help. “The creative industries are part of the diverse product of the country. We have a lot of work to do in the next three years, but I know that we are creating something that’s going to grow. We are already actively engaging with institutions like Serpentine, and in that respect, MICAS is not going to be afraid to make leaps and bounds.”
After the death of his mother a few years ago, he needed a reason and purpose to return to Malta. MICAS, scheduled to open its doors in 2021, became that purpose.
Rondinone, who is a New York-based artist of international repute, will have his work – entitled the radiant – on show at Sa Maison Garden in Floriana until next March. In conversation with him about the radiant, which will be dedicated to the children of Malta, Rondinone says that, in collaboration with over a thousand children from Skolasajf centres, he is also presenting an installation which he has collectively entitled ‘Joy’. Poignantly, the hopes and dreams of the participating school children were inscribed on pieces of wood and attached to wishing bells, which are now dotted among the trees in the Garden.
“We want to make MICAS a place to go to, to visit,” he explains, with a decided
In addition to Rondinone’s work, the MICAS launch was also characterised
And that’s what it takes to be a cultural ambassador.
In a very candid interview in his beautiful home in Valletta, Francis tells me about his background and how he was overcome and won over by contemporary art, even though he had no real knowledge of, or education in, the subject. “The best people in the industry have it in their heart; many fall into the industry by chance or circumstance,” he admits.
VALLETTA
Malta Contemporary Art Closes Malta Contemporary Art (MCA) in Valletta has closed its doors on the final day of an exhibition entitled Desert Island. The exhibition brought together artist/film-makers Bettina Hutschek, Adrian Abela and Peter Sant and took as its starting point the concepts of disconnection and isolation. MCA was founded by Mark Mangion in 2008 in Malta as a geographically specific contemporary art project and, for a while, became a successful forum for contemporary art in Malta, contributing significantly to the visual arts scene. It was reopened last year in a new venue at the centre of Valletta. We await MCA’s next move. Image right:The gallery recently announced on social media that an exhibition curated by owner Mark Mangion, himself a contemporary artist, will be its last in Malta.
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by an exhibition entitled Connecting Geographies from idea to project, curated by Ruth Bianco, in the MICAS barrel vaults, as well as a series of talks entitled ‘Conversations on the Rock’ which engaged with a wide variety of audiences. Taking place in a number of locations, these included a talk on art and internationalisation at the University of Malta, another on getting ahead in the creative industries at MCAST, and two talks on the influences and status of contemporary art, held at the Archaeology Museum.
“We are trying to deliver a world-class institution; we’re building an identity three years ahead of its opening. We need to look at the project in a global way and we need to encourage knowledge and growth by engaging all aspects of the community.”
Photo by MAS for HOMEWORKS magazine
the news last February that Francis Sultana had been named the second Cultural Ambassador to Malta was so significant.
Art News / Interview / Book Nov – Dec –‘18 BAROQUE FESTIVAL
BOOK
MARGERITA PULÈ
Interview: Rediscovering the Baroque
Book: A Modern–Day Renaissance Man
With every edition, The Valletta International Baroque Festival becomes richer, deeper, and more varied. There is so much that is yet to be discovered in the early music genre, and that can be rediscovered, that festival audiences are spoilt for choice.
“A festival risks becoming stale if it no longer challenges itself; he has guarded against this by constantly reworking, curating and shaping the festival.” The Valletta International Baroque festival has built itself a reputation for providing new experiences for its audiences, seeking out beautiful, little-known venues and pairing them with an eclectic mix of Baroque styles. Kenneth is aware that a festival risks becoming stale if it no longer challenges itself and he has guarded against this by constantly reworking, curating and shaping the festival to create a well-respected and anticipated collection of events. Take, for example, one of this edition’s highlights: a back-to-back combination of Baroque and rock. The evening will begin with the Mattheus Ensemble playing concertos by Vivaldi and Telemann. During an extended interval, Hansjörg Albrecht will play Goldberg Variations on the organ at St John’s Co-Cathedral. After this, the tone will change, as the Mattheus Ensemble continue with a Barock ‘n’ Roll experience! Next year will see the festival continue to extend beyond Valletta: venues will include the Collegiate Basilica of Our Lady of Victories in Senglea, the Aula Capitaulare in Mdina and the Ta’ Giezu Church in Rabat. And what about this year’s performers? Ensembles include the Lautten Compagney and Ensemble Zefiro, as well as The Orchestra in the Age of Enlightenment, while soloists include stars like Nuria Rial, Christos Kechris and Charlie Siem. Kenneth keeps up-to-date with festivals around Europe, to ensure that only the best are invited to Valletta. “There is so much in Baroque that is still fresh, and still waiting to be discovered,” he says, and it is this enthusiasm and love of music that will ensure the festival’s rich texture and exciting line-up in January. The Valletta International Baroque Festival runs from 11 to 25 January 2019 at venues around Valletta and other parts of Malta. Go to www.teatrumanoel.com.mt for more details. Book on bookings.teatrumanoel@teatrumanoel.org.mt or (+356) 21246389, or visit the booking office, Monday to Friday between 10am until 1pm and 5 to 7pm, or Saturday 10am until 1pm.
Painting of Richard England by his son Marc England
“I find that each year the festival develops a distinct character of its own,” says Kenneth Zammit Tabona, Artistic Director of the Valletta International Baroque Festival. “This coming year is no exception. It is quirkier, more idiosyncratic, than other editions”, he elaborates, adding that instruments in this edition include saxophones, marimbas and even an oud.
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ctober saw the publishing of an unconventional autobiography by architect Prof. Richard England, reflecting his varied and rich career and humanistic outlook. Chambers of Memory, edited by Conrad Thake, is presented as a collection of thoughts and experiences on various themes: England’s favourite works of art, literary texts, buildings and musical compositions. It also includes anecdotes from England’s life, interactions with dignitaries and fellow architects, as well as a selection of his freehand sketches. His wide-ranging interests and talents are evident in this vivid collection of his thoughts and experiences and this excerpt from the first chapter of the book, Rescuing the Past from Oblivion, gives a glimpse into his approach to writing it. Below is a short extract from the first chapter of Chambers of Memory. We are who we are because of our memories. They form our present and shape our future; they are our personal history and without them we lose our identity.
Chambers of Memory is about episodes, likes, and dislikes from the narrative of my life, a stroll down memory lane; a ship in a bottle laden with reminiscences and recollections drifting on the high seas of my life. I augur that if the wind blows in the right direction it may perhaps reach a safe harbour in some reader’s heart. The scripting of this mnemonic diary of personal experiences and penchants was initiated by my wife Myriam’s and son Marc’s ceaseless insistence that I should document my recollections, remembrances, and experiences before memories became too fumbled and blurred. Having been repeatedly told that ‘what you recount in your stories could well make a book’, it proved difficult to resist their pressure and I finally conceded to putting pen to paper. The result is this volume, a collection of flashbacks and anamnesis; a chronology of personal ruminations, reminiscences, and anecdotes from my life hovering between lucidity and opacity. These wanderings through the latent corridors of my mind are therefore affectionately dedicated to their natal initiators Myriam and Marc in the hope that they will live up to their and other readers’ expectations. If not, the responsibility must regretfully rest on their shoulders.
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Design News / Exhibition / Milan Nov – Dec –‘18 DESIGN - MILAN
Achille Castiglioni
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elebrating the centenary of his birth, La Triennale di Milano is devoting a major monographic exhibition to Achille Castiglioni (19182002), one of the most important masters of Italian design.
The exhibition examines Castiglioni’s work in a transversal manner, ranging from design through architecture to exhibition displays. The curation and installation is entrusted to Patricia Urquiola, an architect and designer who not only took her first steps alongside Castiglioni (she graduated under him at the Politecnico University of Milan in 1989), but also took up both his legacy and his ability to surprise through design. Castiglioni was undoubtedly one of the founding fathers of the profession and of the Italian design system. His legacy is kept very much alive today by the Fondazione Achille Castiglioni – in the historic studio in Piazza Castello – dedicated to catalogue, sort, archive, digitise projects, drawings, photographs, models and videos: the whole world of Achille Castiglioni, in which he has worked for more than 60 years, first with the brothers Livio and Pier Giacomo and then, since 1968, alone. The items he designed – most of which are still in production today, and among their manufacturers’ bestselling products – took inspiration from the everyday world and were transformed by him into something new, adopting a wry approach to the relationship between form and function. Castiglioni designed over 400 temporary display installations for exhibitions and fairs and worked with countless companies in the sector, including Alessi, Brionvega, B&B Italia, BBB Bonacina, Cimbali, Danese, Driade, De Padova, Flos – for which he worked as a designer from the moment the company was founded – Cassina, Moroso, Knoll International, Kartell and Zanotta. The exhibition at La Triennale di Milano in Milan is open until 20 January, Tuesday to Sunday, 10.30am to 8.30pm, with last admissions at 7.30pm.
Castiglioni was undoubtedly one of the founding fathers of the Italian design system.
Photos: Romualdo Moretti
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Architecture / Troglodytic / Armenia + Malta Nov – Dec –‘18 ARMENIA
KONRAD BUHAGIAR
The Nature of Architecture
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hen my father was a small boy, he used to spend the hot summer months with his family in a ‘cool’ house that was perched on the sheer stone edge of the hill that dominated Ghadira Bay. The house, aptly called Ghar-u-casa (cave-anda-home), was built on a natural rock platform at the foot of a millennial cave and consisted simply of a vernacular façade plugged onto the mouth that once overlooked the sandy beach below. I have often imagined the arduous trip undertaken by the entire family, a karozzin as sole means of transport, that departed from the fortified harbour of Valletta in the early hours of the morning for the idyllic rural settlement of Mellieha in the isolated northern end of the island; the excitement that filled my father and his younger brother to the point of exhaustion on their arrival at their summer abode, the warm air and the fading light at the end of the journey, the welcoming cool, frugal stone house surrounded by so much luscious nature: walls of prickly pear and a roof woven of vine leaves, all wrapped in the silky summer breeze that reached up from the sea below. Nature and architecture were inseparably intertwined in the shadows cast by the glow of the candles on that first night in the country, a tapestry, natural and man-made in equal measure, highlighted by fireflies darting in the sweet night air and silence descending on the hill.
An equally spiritual and awe-inspiring architectural revelation was reserved for me in Yerevan a month ago, when I was invited for the birthday party of a friend of mine. A ride in the country through the hilly Armenian landscape, with Mount Ararat as a permanent backdrop, took us to the monastery of Geghard at the entrance of the Upper Azat Valley. The monastery contains a number of churches and tombs, most
of them cut from the living rock, a complex of mediaeval buildings set into a landscape of great natural beauty with high cliffs on the northern side of the enclave and a defensive wall encircling the rest. The monument evolved between the 4th and 13th centuries. According to tradition, the original monastery, known as Ayrivank or the Monastery-in-theCave, was founded by St Gregory the Illuminator, following the adoption of Christianity as the state religion in Armenia. The main architectural complex was completed in the 13th century and consists of the cathedral, the adjacent narthex, eastern and western rock-cut churches, the family tombs of the princes as well as various cells and numerous rock-cut crossstones. The plan of the main church is a Greek cross covered with a dome on a square base and linked with the supporting columns by vaulting. In this ancient, silent, mysterious architectural masterpiece of mediaeval Armenia where, in addition to the religious constructions, a school, scriptorium, library and many rock-cut cells used as dwellings for clergymen could be found, Armenian manuscript art was developed in the 13th century. This is characterised by an intricate and beautifully wrought composition of lines that echoes the stone carvings of these top-lit, domed chambers, highlighted by cascading light falling through the heavily sculpted oculi. Is it this quality of zenithal light that produces the intense spiritual atmosphere of these structures –
Photos by Architecture Project
Of troglodytic architecture, buildings partially or en-
tirely hewn out of the rock, with the Hypogeum, Malta perhaps has the oldest and most unique example created by mankind. I sometimes wonder whether I obey some ancestral impulse when I am irresistibly drawn to these primitive constructions carved out of the landscape. Several years ago, Architecture Project (AP) was invited to participate in a competition for a temporary protective shelter for five churches in Lalibela, a town in the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia. The breath-taking rock-cut churches, dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, are pilgrimage sites for Coptic Christians. Carved out of the granitic rock of the hill itself, the subterranean monoliths include the huge Bete Medhane Alem, and Bete Giyorgis with its Greek cross plan. The churches are joined by tunnels and trenches and carved bas-reliefs and coloured frescoes decorate the inside walls. I spent a night vigil there during one of the big religious festivals that attract hundreds of white-robed pilgrims at sunset, crowding the courtyards of the churches, praying in the shade of the surrounding jacaranda trees and bearing witness to Christianity in its most unadulterated and powerful form.
The monastery of Geghard, at the entrance of the Upper Azat Valley, Armenia
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Architecture / Troglodytic / Armenia + Malta Nov – Dec –‘18
KONRAD BUHAGIAR is a founding partner of Architecture Project and has been responsible for numerous restoration and rehabilitation works in historic buildings and urban sites. He has lectured in Malta and several countries abroad, published numerous historical articles and has been the Chairman of both the Heritage Advisory Committee and the Valletta Rehabilitation Committee. Konrad is also the chief editor behind our A Printed Thing and Founding Myths of Architecture publications.
ARMENIA
which seem as if they were created for eternity? In his essay Eupalinos ou L’Architecte (1921), Paul Valéry described the architect’s work as starting exactly where God left off. The collaboration of both is the prerequisite for a style of architecture that is timeless. The essay takes the form of a Platonic prose dialogue between the shades of Socrates and Phaedrus in Hades, as they debate the spiritual nature of Architecture. Valéry’s thesis is that Nature, the work of the Creator, is further developed by the architect to resist the destructive forces of chaos (durability) and to satisfy the needs of Man’s body (utility) as well as those of his soul (beauty). The building project thus informs matter in a process similar to that of gnosis. In so doing, Architecture calls into play the hidden harmonies contained in Nature’s Lucidus Ordo, the unity and clarity generated by the organic laws of mathematics. At this moment of creation, when Nature and Architecture come to co-exist harmoniously, Valéry’s dialectics of opposites – past and present, accident and essence, ephemeral and lasting, proximity and distance, motion and rest, lightness and gravity – find an ideal equilibrium and the timeless building is born, like a piece of heaven created out of the imperfection of the earth. AP’s project for shelters for five churches in Lalibela The power of the intervention was derived from the uninterrupted connection between the monuments, the landscape, the crowds of pilgrims, the shelters themselves and the all-encompassing Faith that brought this sacred composition together. The project was conceived as a semi-translucent cloud floating above the religious site, preserving the continuity between the monument and the landscape out of which it was carved, and the landscape is untouched. The cloud creates a complementary secondary landscape belonging to the sky as well as to the millennia.
The monastery of Geghard, at the entrance of the Upper Azat Valley, Armenia
“I am irresistibly drawn to these primitive constructions carved out of the landscape.” Bete Giyorgis, Lalibela, northern Ethiopia
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Dr Joanna Delia is a medical doctor who specialises in cosmetic medicine. She is also a cultural consumer and art collector who tirelessly supports local contemporary art and culture.
Opinion / Malta Design Week
Highlights
Nov – Dec –‘18 MALTA
JOANNA DELIA
Designing Life, Designing Dialogue.
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was fortunate enough to have had my house designed for me: to have everything in my house designed for me, around me, the way I live, and who I love. And, in a beautiful way, everywhere you look is designed to be pleasing, harmonious and beautiful, as well as to function for me.
I was honoured to meet renowned architect Tetsuo Kondo from Japan, who is currently designing the public green space that will soon top the anticipated Valletta Design Cluster. It feels almost surreal that a much-needed centralised initiative to provide a space, and a process to foster, nurture and help the development of a design culture in Valletta is actually happening. The 2018 edition also honoured the Malta-based audience with a presentation by Toby F. Blunt from super-architecture firm Foster + Partners and a perhaps tad controversial one by Prof Arch. Marco Casamonti from Archea, Italy about the much-discussed rendition of the project which revived the Suq tal-Belt.
I realised at a young age how affected I am visually by my surroundings. How the right mix of symmetry and wellthought-out organised chaos, the right amount of light, the right proportions and the right composition of items in my field of vision make me feel content and happy, and help me to be efficient. I understand the value of everyday objects that have been designed while keeping human behaviour in mind: individual behaviour, sometimes. And there is one thing I love more than what is visually pleasing while being functional: I love good conversation. I possibly love a good discussion so much that it might virtually obliterate my concerns with my immediate physical surroundings, especially if my surroundings are far from beautiful. This is why Design Dialogues,held every second year by 808 Foundation is, for me, one of the highlights of the Maltese Contemporary cultural calendar. Dialogue / Discussion / Design 808 Foundation, with architect Chris Briffa at its helm, is a non-profit NGO consisting of people who are not only affected by good design, its presence – and often its absence, but who have made it their life’s mission to help people understand its importance. They launched the first ever Malta Design Week in 2011 and embedded in it the first Design Dialogues. In that first Design Week, it was clear that the team was attempting to launch a culture of valuing design, of valuing quality in craftsmanship, of appreciating and supporting creativity and respecting originality. I truly believe that the artists and designers who designed for and showed
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As famed Austrian architect Peter Lorenz said recently, while giving a presentation in Malta, design is not about style and form but about facilitating and enriching life, while respecting the environment in which we live.
their work at that first Design Week in Malta have been permanently affected by it. It was around that time that EnriqueTabone started making herincredible jewellery and eventually opened a shop on Old Bakery Street. Duška Maleševic published her first book and Architect Rueben Lautier launched The Natural Stone Workshop, selling extraordinary carved marble everyday objects. Sandra Zaffarese and Jennifer Barth set up a few pop-up shops that both sourced and commissioned design objects and presented a gift-buying experience unlike anything that this country had ever seen. I also got the impression that importers of designer furniture, such as DEX – who import VITRA – were, if I were to be optimistic, catapulted into people’s minds when it came to choosing both contract furniture for establishments
and also pieces for our homes. ‘The Original Comes from Vitra’ was the title of an ancillary event showing a roaming exhibition of Vitra masterpieces held at the Valletta Waterfront at the same time as this year’s Design Dialogues.The well attended TED-talk style presentations that constituted Design Dialogues 2018 were given by a wonderfully diverse group of high-calibre, international and local designers and architects and some effort was made to ensure that either the speaker or the subject had some form of local context. When checking out the speakers, I read about two of the founding members of 72 Hour Urban Action and found myself learning how this intense competition – aimed at transforming urban spaces – had even reached our very own Birzebbuga!
Good design should do all this, whether it’s an object designed to last, in a sustainable and re-usable material and replaces and does away with the need for several other objects, or a building that not only does not encroach on open spaces and the natural landscape but increases them, and enhances our enjoyment of them. There’s still a long way to go, and I honestly cannot wait for the next edition of Design Dialogues. Design Dialogues was presented by 808 Foundation between 17 and 22 September at Valletta Campus Theatre. This year’s Design Dialogues speakers were: Tetsuo Kondo (Tetsuo Kondo Architects; Japan), Dmitri Jajich & Karl Micallef (Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, USA); Toby F. Blunt (Foster + Partners, UK); Prof. Arch. Marco Casamonti (Archea, Italy); Marco Scerri (Malta); 72 Hour Urban Action (GER); OS ∆ OOS (NDR); Germans Ermics (Latvia/NDR); Prof. Andrew Walters (PDR, Wales); Neil Pace O’Shea (Malta) and other special guests. More information is available on www. designweek.com.mt
Spotlight / Sculpture / New York Nov – Dec –‘18 INTERVIEWSCULPTURE
Q+A: Skye Ferrante At what moment did you decide to be an artist, and how did you find your medium – wire. No, sorry, there was no moment, no sudden flash of inspiration. I wanted to be a lot of things growing up, but mostly a tap dancer, or if not that, then Robin Hood. It was the twin influences of Fred Astaire and Errol Flynn. Even now, I regret not being either, although I did become a ballet dancer, professionally and, more recently, a fencing enthusiast. I have an art collector and friend, the Olympic sabre coach, Zoran Tulum, who gives me lessons as well as dollars in exchange for sculpture. It was Zoran who told me about Strait Street in Malta, how it was once the street of duels – for a time all duels took place in Strait Street. How strange to think of it, and horrifying: the centuries of blood spilled beneath the paving stones… although maybe less than what a generation of drunken sailors may have left behind. While recovering from a ballet injury I was apprenticed to a traditional bronze sculptor in his studio in the crypt beneath The Cathedral of St John the Divine in Manhattan. The process to reach a bronze was so time-consuming, laborious and ultimately expensive – from the armature wire to clay, to plaster cast, to rubber mould, to likely never affording the foundry fee while having destroyed the original artwork to make way for a series of unending reproductions – that I quit and tossed out every step but for the wire. I wanted to sculpt as fast as a painter paints and I found a way to do so, finishing each sculpture in one sitting, much like the impressionists I so admired, thereby capturing the movement that we see in life. It was movement that I was after, and this I credit to ballet, which informs everything I do. Art is movement – or rather, when it works, it moves. There is a continuity maintained in every good performance, whether it’s on stage or on the wall, to hold the audience. A good sentence will do the same. As with a good book, the pages turn.
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Spotlight / Sculpture / New York Nov – Dec –‘18
point of view, is performative, including flourishes, spinning pliers, twisting flicks of the hand, pirouettes of the wrist and elongations of the arm – a ballet dancer in a sword fight. What do you do for inspiration to create art? And what has been the most challenging work you have created? “Inspiration is for amateurs,” Chuck Close said. “The rest of us just show up and get to work.” I couldn’t say it better myself, but I’ll add to it. I am not inspired – period – until the moment I begin. I almost never want to sculpt until the curtain rises or, in this case, the robe falls. I’ve had portrait sittings booked for weeks, and with the most extraordinary people – but I dread it, always, until the first bend. I’d much prefer the company without having to go to work. It’s exhausting, and I usually collapse at the end. At least there’s wine. The people who sit for me are why I sculpt, and ever since I began writing about the process and the models who are my friends, I stopped choosing as the sculptor. I choose people I want to write about and the sculpture is the excuse – it has become secondary – although it pays the rent… inspiring me to breath another month of New York air. If you mean the most technically complex and/or exhausting I would say a three-metre, free-standing Eiffel Tower I completed in one shot, one spool, over 10 days in my London studio, using over 340 metres of continuous aluminium wire which, coincidentally, if stretched up from the ground would reach the top of the real one in the Champs de Mars. Would you agree that your favoured topic is the female nude? How would you describe your technique? I work, with no exceptions, from a single spool of wire – my only rule – unbroken until the final cut. I am selftaught. No art school, although if I had gone to one I would certainly have quit to travel instead. The technique continues to evolve – more recently becoming more illustrative than sculptural, with the influence of my daughter, who draws very well – much better than me. She can draw or paint exactly what she sees in
front of her, from a photograph or a painting in a museum. I only have three hours of strength and focus to bend metal and make the connections that I need to think continuously, in the present, often two or three steps ahead. With less time, and the pressure of human presence while respecting theirs, I think less, move faster – as fast as I can without losing any skill. The result, when viewed from the model and the audience’s
I do love trees as well, and florals especially but, yes, I would agree. It all goes back to ballet. I was the only boy in a room, pretty much, until I attended S.A.B. where I was shocked to be in a room full of men – and no women at all, and the teachers were men too – and Russian, except for one Dane. I can’t say I’ve ever been too comfortable with men, either as my subjects or my friends, with few >>
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Spotlight / Sculpture / New York Nov – Dec –‘18 SCULPTURE
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Central Saint Martin’s in King’s Cross, it’s superfluous and big business. I think London trends have been informing New York for some decades now. If there was ever a London or New York scene you wouldn’t know it, because the contemporary art world is now viewed in giant tented cubicles the world over, and shared seasonally like fashion. I enjoy going to the museums in London, most recently with my daughter, often to see one artwork and then escape to the nearest park – in the case of Kenwood House, you can see the best Vermeer and the best Rembrandt in the world without ever leaving Hampstead Heath. In any given art fair, by contrast, we are exposed to a shopping mall experience of art and the latest fashion trends of shiny or bright things and larger than life, machine-fabricated creations, made to fit on very small screens. No thanks. I’d rather fly a kite on Parliament Hill. You’ve been to Malta. What are your thoughts on its potential as an art destination and what have you experienced there? exceptions, but for a long time, male nudes were my bread and butter. People are people, and yet… female nudes are much more challenging. I can make mistakes on a male nude, hide them in the rough lines and it will still work. Soft lines show everything, curves rather than angles, and I love all of them on a woman. The model makes a difference. I don’t have types or any real preferences, except that they be aware of themselves, as dancers are, although they don’t have to be dancers – only present and not too stiff. Even in the worst cases, when we are not on the same page, I try to finish what we’ve started and I’ve been surprised by the result. In the best, the model and I are collaborating, dancing in a pas de deux, and probably laughing, and in her I find an infinity of lines and potential sculptures and I’m a little bit in love. She’s not my ‘muse’, the term is outdated and applies to a non-speaking role and the object of a problematic Greek myth. She is a partner in the process and, certainly in my experience, Galatea speaks. When I get lucky, she tells me a story – and if the sculpture’s good, I’d like to think that the story resides in it. How do you think New York has shaped your creativity, lifestyle and outlook? New York could be kinder. New York has been kinder – but there’s no other place like it, unfortunately, and I’m biased. I was born on 5th Avenue and 105th Street. If I ever wanted to run home, I’m here. So I flee – to Europe, mainly. You spend a lot of time in London. From your perspective, how would you describe the artistic art scene there? London is a second home, long before my unexpected living from sculpture. I arrived there in the early nineties, as a writer. I can only describe the art scene then as sickeningly trendy and very small. It’s still trendy, still sickening and, if you judge by the expansion of
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I’ll tell you what I think of Malta as a potential art destination, honestly. I think it has more potential than Athens, and I know Athens well. I speak of Athens because I believe Athens is the new Berlin – but even when artists were rushing to Berlin for cheap space, I couldn’t see the point. The buyers aren’t there.
They still aren’t. The buyers are in New York and London, full stop. I lived in Paris. Great place to live, to make art, to make love, but not to sell – and to sell is to live. Malta is experiencing a construction boom, at least for the next few years, and with every new apartment there are walls to fill. Malta has buyers, they just don’t know it yet. Malta really doesn’t need art galleries to make it an art destination either. Galleries are passé, along with fixed locations and annual rents. All we need are collectors and dealers to refer them to our studios or to their homes where art can be loaned on approval. Yeah, I could keep a studio in Sliema – as long as I don’t have to drive in that traffic! Free water taxis for artists? I’m in. What are you working on now? A book. A working artist memoir called The Naked and the Nude. It’s a collection of portrait stories about the wild and fabulous and beautiful people I have had the pleasure of sculpting. What’s your philosophy on life? Parry riposte. Skye Ferrante is represented by Lily Agius Gallery in Malta. www.lilyagiusgallery.com
“The result is performative, including flourishes, spinning pliers, twisting flicks of the hand, pirouettes of the wrist and elongations of the arm – a ballet dancer in a sword fight.”
Julian Cardona enjoys writing about every topic under the sun: from science and economics to fun curiosities about human nature. When not writing, he teaches Statistics and Economics at a higher institute and enjoys life with his wife Andrea and their humongous dog Pedro.
Opinion / Theory Nov – Dec –‘18 TOPIC
JULIAN CARDONA
Peering into the Artistic Mind “In the normal course of events many men and women are born with various remarkable qualities and talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind...” Thus Giorgio Vasari describes Leonardo Da Vinci.
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a Vinci was a man known to have had a multitude of interests, who often started but then neglected to finish a piece of work due to other interests taking over. He was also known to be extremely slow in his work and to be kind of ‘peculiar’ in his way of approaching work: “He was so delighted when he saw certain bizarre heads of men, with the beard or hair growing naturally, that he would follow one that pleased him a whole day, and so treasured him up in idea, that afterwards, on arriving home, he drew him as if he had had him in his presence.” Another who needs no introduction is Ludwig van Beethoven. He is widely acknowledged as one of the giants of classical music, with majestic sonatas that shaped the transition from the Classicism of the 18th century to the 19th-century Romanticism, all the while being severely challenged by worsening deafness. On the other hand, he was a man notorious for disdaining authority and rank and was obsessed, even to the verge of the paranoia, when it came to audience attention. He would frequently stop his performances if his audience was chatting amongst themselves or did not give him their full, undivided, attention. Is there some pattern here, because the curious side of most of us ‘commoners’ should surely make us wonder whether it’s a ‘thing’ with artistic brains? The fact that they see things that most of us do not is a given – but is this the result of a deeper contemplative capacity than most, or is it perhaps that the minds of artists are structured differently? Research published in NeuroImage suggests that an artist’s talent could be innate. Leading author Rebecca Chamberlain from KU Leuven, Belgium, expressed her life-long interest in studying whether an artist’s view of the world was different from the norm. “People who are better at drawing really seem to have more developed structures in the areas of the brain that control fine motor performance and what we call ‘procedural memory’,” she explained.
as an artist. Contrary to common belief, our visual system does not actually see objects, but rather shadows, contours, edges and other surface features that help us infer the identity of objects. Artists know this either intuitively or through training. But how would that explain that some incredible antistatic geniuses were known to be also a tad weird? Just think about Salvador Dali, who would paint himself blue and walk around with a loaf of bread strapped to his head. Is this crazy? Not necessarily. Scientists refer to this personality type as ‘schizotypy’. People with this personality trait tend to hold beliefs that most of us would consider odd. But they’re not at all crazy in the clinical sense in that they are not disconnected from reality and are not a danger to themselves or others. In fact, people with this strange characteristic are actually known to be creative masters. Research confirms a link between schizotypy and creative achievement.
In a recent study, researchers studied the brains of 21 art students and compared them to those of 23 non-artists, using a scanning technique called ‘voxel-based morphometry’. These highly detailed scans provided evidence that the artist group had significantly more grey matter in the area of the brain called ‘the precuneus’ in the parietal lobe. “This region is involved in a range of functions but potentially in things that could be linked to creativity, like visual imagery – being able to manipulate visual images in your brain, combine them and deconstruct them,” said Dr Chamberlain. So, are artists born talented? The answer is tricky. There is a strong nature versus nurture argument here that has not yet been resolved. The increased grey matter patterns that put the person in an artistically advantageous position could be there from birth or could result from exposure to training. Art professors have long maintained that training students to see the world in a different way is critical to their development
Psychologists will take time to truly understand whether the artistic cognitive process is of a different ‘make’, but there is little doubt that whether one is ‘naturally predisposed’ to art or not, making people – especially at a young age – think artistically is highly beneficial. Dr Lawrence Katz is an internationally recognised pioneer in neuron regeneration research and the author of Keep Your Brain Alive: 83 Neurobic Exercises to Help Prevent Memory Loss and Increase Mental Fitness. He found that mental decline was due mainly to the loss of communication between brain cells, nor from the death of brain cells themselves. He coined the word ‘neurobics’ to describe brain exercises that use a person’s senses in new and novel ways, and creating art certainly fits this definition. The great thing is that, unlike maths, there is no one correct answer when it comes to art. Art encourages creative thinking and lets you come up with your own unique solutions: there are no mistakes, no blunders. The day when artistic creativity, in all its shapes and forms, is taken seriously by educators will be the day that our current robotic curriculum becomes something appealing to students. That day, perhaps, we will have a better chance of seeing clear-headed, thinking citizens.
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Review / Marakesh / Yves Saint Laurent Nov – Dec –‘18 TRAVEL
IZ COLLINS
A
Yves Saint Laurent, Place Djemaa El Fna © Reginald Gray
A Touch of Flamboyance
nother sun-drenched, aroma-filled day in Marrakech and I am walking up a road with neatest curbs I have seen so far in the three days I have been exploring the city.
My first stop on Rue Yves Saint Laurent is the Jardin Majorelle, where I meet the vibrant and extremely hospitable Zora el-Hajja, who oversees communications here. She begins her tour of this museum and garden, for which she has a real passion, by taking me to the museum entrance, where she points out how the morning light creates a clever, playful shadow on the pavement – a reflection of the gold-lettered signage ‘Musée YVES SAINT LAURENT Marrakesh’.
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The building structure is simple and yet elaborate – created by KO studio, the architectural design duo Olivier Marty and Karl Fournier. Inspiration came from their research into the couturier’s archives: they were struck by sketches showing curves running alongside straight lines and by the succession of delicate and bold forms that characterises the work of Yves Saint Laurent. The façade of the building appears as an intersection of cubes with a lace-like covering of bricks, creating patterns that recall the weft and warp of fabric. As with the lining of a couture jacket, the interior is radically different: velvety, smooth and radiant. On entering, the first piece displayed for the visitor is an iconic sculpture of the Calao bird (Great Hornbill) – displayed up high on a pedestal. It is believed by the Senufo tribes across Africa (Mali, Ivory Coast and Burkino Faso) to be one of the first creatures to appear on earth and to be the provider of prosperity, as well as a symbol of fertility and virility.
The museum contains a hall for visiting exhibitions, a theatre, the main gallery and a café. But I am here to see the creations of Yves Saint Laurent and to gain a little more insight to what he brought to the world of fashion. In particular, I am curious about the progressive 1966 ‘le smoking’ – the first tuxedo suit designed for women. “For a woman, le smoking is an indispensable garment with which she finds herself continually in fashion because it is about style, not fashion. Fashions come and go, but style is forever” (YSL). Dedicated to the work of the great couturier, the museum conserves a part of the collection belonging to the Fondation Pierre Bergé–Yves Saint Laurent. Housed at 5, Avenue Marceau in Paris, the collection includes 5,000 articles of clothing and 15,000 haute couture accessories, as well as tens of thousands of drawings. >>
Iz Collins spent her childhood in Malta but grew up in London. She admires all creative pursuits and sees beauty in every artistic endeavour. She holds a masters degree in Creativity and Innovation from the Edward De Bono Institute.
Review / Marakesh / Yves Saint Laurent Nov – Dec –‘18 TRAVEL
The 50 garments found proudly displayed in Marrakesh on individually designed and formed black mannequins have been chosen to give a thorough overview of YSL’s many phases of expression, design language and design influences. The chosen pieces are a colourful summary of the couturier’s appreciation of life and all its experiences. The 50 pieces chosen are displayed around themes dear to Yves Saint Laurent – Masculine-Feminine, Black, Africa and Morocco, Imaginary Voyages, Gardens and Art – and offer an original interpretation of his work. The garments on display are rotated regularly, in order to ensure their conservation and to constantly revive the experience.
to discover that the exhibition also showcased YSL’s art-inspired work. He literally took inspiration from artists he loved, such as Van Gogh, Matisse, and Picasso, and recreated their unique styles by transposing them into fashion garments with his touch. Perhaps the most famous of his art-influenced designs was the Mondrian dress, labelled ‘the dress for tomorrow’ when he designed it in 1965.
Apart from my excitement at having seen the ‘le smoking’ style jackets and suits on display as part of the Masculine-Feminine section, I was delighted
The museum boasts an exquisite lighting design that creates an encapsulating space full of imagery, sound, texture and colour and the café – Le Studio – cannot
A flamboyant but tasteful large wall photograph of YSL endorses the gallery exhibiting the pieces – as the artist overlooks the visitor’s journey through his work, forever caring for his creations.
be left unmentioned. Taking its name from Yves Saint Laurent’s workspace at 5 Avenue Marceau, it incorporates his sayings on love and beauty on its menus, giving the visitor a further insight into the spirit of the man. The pale-coloured wood, plaster light fittings and white marble at its entrance create a monastic yet contemporary feel, while a large, panoramic drawing by Ulrich Gassmann of Yves Saint Laurent’s Paris studio reminds us of the café’s name. The warm saffron colour theme, and carefully designed outdoor and indoor spaces, offers a quiet space to the visitor in which to savour the beauty of art and fashion at this museum, a place to contemplate an exposé that aims to give us an intimate rendezvous with Yves Saint Laurent.
Entrance of YSL, mYSLm © Fondation Jardin Majorelle / Photo Nicolas Mathéus
Pierre Bergé et Yves Saint Laurent © DR
Exterior view of the Solomon R. Gugenheim Museum during Hugo Boss prize
NEWS
Images in the YSL room, mYSLm © Fondation Jardin Majorelle / Photo Nicolas Mathéus
Yves Saint Laurent © Pierre Bergé
New York
2018 Hugo Boss Prize Jamaican-American artist Simone Leigh has been awarded the Hugo Boss Prize 2018 by Mark Langer, Chairman and CEO of Hugo Boss AG, and Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. Leigh is the 12th artist to receive the biennial accolade, which was established in 1996 to recognise significant achievement in contemporary art; the prize is administered by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and carries a stipend of $100,000. Simone Leigh’s work will be presented in a solo exhibition at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum next spring. The artist was selected from a short-list of six finalists which included Bouchra Khalili, Teresa Margolles, Emeka Ogboh, Frances Stark and Wu Tsang. www.hugoboss.com/artprize
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01/11/2018 4:52 PM
Spotlight / Events / Malta Nov – Dec –‘18 VISUAL ART EXHIBITIONS
A selection of curated events in Malta
11 – 12. 18 Events until Dec
8.11.18
9. 11. 18
1 0 .1 1 .1 8
1 5 .1 1 .1 8
15.11.2018
17.11.18
SAUDADE
T H AT G O L D E N STA I N O F T I M E
FLOWERHEADS
WICCNA
VO/EROCITY
Artist Vince Briffa presents a series of drawingpaintings on prepared paper that explore the complex and fragile reality of man and the foolhardiness brought about by our becoming conscious of our primacy – our heightened sense of superiority over nature, and our false notion of nature’s helplessness without us. The series is predominantly motivated by Kant’s definition of the sublime as not residing in any of the things of nature but only in our minds.
Wiccna, by Zvezdan Relic, is an intimate and collective compendium of lith-printed photographic portraits: a quiet celebration of the immeasurable variety of faces that inhabit, or pass through, the humble geography of the Maltese Islands. The accompanying book will feature aesthetic, anthropological and literary essays on aspects of physiognomy, identity and photography, each written in a different language that has influenced Malta throughout its history: Arabic, English, French, Italian, Maltese and Spanish.
DIS’: BETWIXT THE WORLD DEST R OY ’ D A N D THE WORLD R E STO R ’ D
Until 29 November
Saudade is a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. It carries a repressed knowledge that the object of the longing might never return. In his new body of work, Gabriel Buttigieg explores with beauty the strained nature of experience. Establishing identity through memory, nothing remains unmoved and his paintings show how cultural memory is a reconstructive process in which – through colour, tone, and emotion – specific events are constantly recollected or revalued. Art Galleries, Palazzo de La Salle, Valletta Mondays to Fridays: 8am to 7pm; Saturdays: 9am to 1:30pm Image: Gabriel Buttigieg
Until 30 November
Dan Hudson invites us to stop and contemplate this daily phenomenon that we take for granted. The Illusion of the Sun Going Down, at Valletta Contemporary, seems particularly appropriate. The diptych consists of two views of the sun – a video of it setting over the Bacino San Marco in Venice and a monumental close-up of the sun spinning in space from exactly the same moment, created from time-coded images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Where: Valletta Contemporary Tuesdays to Saturdays: 11am to 7pm Image: Dan Hudson, Illusion of the Sun Going Down, 2015
Until 7 December
Where: art..e Gallery, Victoria, Gozo Daily 9.30am to 12.15pm Image: Vince Briffa, Flowerheads
Until 13 December
Where: Blitz Tuesdays to Fridays: 1pm to 6pm Saturdays: 10am-1pm Image: © Zvezdan Reljic
Until 16 December
The works presented by Patrick Fenech in this multimedia exhibition stem from the role and use of creative practice in research and its contribution to knowledge in the visual arts. Mainly inspired by John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, they pose several questions, mainly in relation to the field of environmental ethics and philosophy, which become more relevant today as urgent solutions are needed to repair the damage inflicted on our ecosphere. Where: Space C, Spazju Kreattiv Mon: 9am-5pm; Tues to Fri: 9am to 9pm, Sat and Sun: 10am to 9pm Image: Patrick Fenech
Until 9 December 2018
Lazuli Art Gallery is launching the first collaborative exhibition between father and son, Paul and Thomas Scerri: a collection of sculptures inspired by our environment. Paul is inspired by a society built on apathy, ignorance, greed and the love of power. Thomas’s work is prompted by the great number of trees that are being sacrificed in the name of progress, due to the construction of roads, apartments and bad pruning. Where: Lazuli Art Gallery Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays:10am to 1pm Image: Paul Scerri
And not to be missed: Constellation Malta until 9 December, curated by Rosa Marinez, proposing a series of artistic interventions throughout the geography of the Maltese archipelago. Venues include Fort St Elmo in Valletta (hosting Chiharu Shiota, Austin Camilleri, Forensic Oceanography and Forensic Architecture, and Yoshitomo Nara), Hagar Qim (Saskia Calderón), the National Museum of Natural History in Mdina (Marina Abramovic) and Ta’ Kola Windmill in Gozo (Tania Bertha Judith).
Malta meets Chicago in NEUDECO by James Reka Malta is an island of intense contrasts, which have incessantly fascinated creatives from both within and across its limestone shores. Perhaps it was these very juxtapositions that drew contemporary artist James Reka to this corner of the Mediterranean, finding a resonance with his own distinct style that contrasts sharp design with graffiti. Ahead of his recently-concluded solo show at Chicago’s Vertical Gallery, the artist chose to spend a 3-month summer residency in Malta, shaping his inspiration drawn from the island’s intensity and rugged charm. Malta is woven into Reka’s latest series of NEUDECO paintings and mixed-media sculptures through their earthy tones and deep shades of sea-blue. Connecting to Chicago’s raucous 1920’s, each artwork from the collection is named after well-known speakeasys of the time and embodies art-deco figure-elements and silhouettes. Reka’s instantly-recognisable style has travelled from the alleyways and train lines of Melbourne – where his roots lie – to the permanent collection of Australia’s National Gallery and exhibition walls across the world, from London and New York to Munich and Denmark. His creations, characterised by striking lines and strong colours, have evolved to place an ever-greater emphasis on content that connects with its context. The artwork from the show can be viewed and purchased on www.verticalgallery.com.
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Lavish living
Exclusively from Joinwell Mill Street, Qormi joinwell.com.mt
Highlights
Spotlight / Events / Global Nov – Dec –‘18 PAINTING + SCULPTURE
11 – 12. ‘18 / ‘19
A Pick of international art fairs until April
Events until April
11.04. 18
22. 07. 1 8
2 6 .0 9 .1 8
0 2 .1 0 .1 8
17.10.18
12.11.18
GRAPPLING WITH THE MODERN: FROM DELACROIX TO T H E PR E S E NT D AY
C O N STA N TIN BRANCUSI S C U L P T UR E
S PA C E S H I F T E R S
TA N I A BRUGUERA: 10,143,345
A RT S B I E NN A L E OF LARNACA
LOOP BARCELONA F E ST I VA L A N D FA I R
Until 3 December
Thanks to exceptional loans from French and foreign museums, this exhibition brings together works by artists who inspired Delacroix, including Raphael, Titian, Rubens, Le Lorrain and Solimena, and the principal studies and sketches the artist produced while drafting his three chapel paintings. The exhibition also contains works by 19th and 20th century artists including Gustave Moreau and Marc Chagall, who drew inspiration from Delacroix’s art in their own struggles for modernity. The Musée National Eugène-Delacroix, Paris Image: Eugène Delacroix, La Lutte de Jacob avec l’ange (detail) © Rmn-Gp (Musée du Louvre) / M. Rabeau
Until 18 February
Eleven sculptures by Brancusi will be shown together for the first time, alongside drawings, photographs and films. A selection of never-beforeseen archival material sheds light on this avant-garde sculptor’s relationships with friends, sitters and patrons, including the MoMA itself. This exhibition draws a rich portrait of an artist whose risk-taking and inventive approach to form was hugely influential and changed the course of 20thcentury art. Museum of Modern Art, New York Image: Constantin Brancusi. The Cock. 1924. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of LeRay W. Berdeau. © Succession Brancusi All rights reserved (ARS) 2018.
Until 6 January
Featuring 20 artists and spanning a period of roughly 50 years, this exhibition includes innovative, minimalist sculpture from the 1960s as well as recent works and new commissions that extend the legacy of this ‘optical’ minimalism in different ways, exploring perception and space. Luscious and seductive – and often demonstrating huge technical accomplishment – these objects act as optical devices that enable us to see our surroundings in new and unexpected ways. Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London Image: Installation view of Richard Wilson’s 20:50 (1987) at Space Shifters, Hayward Gallery 2018, © Southbank Centre 1998-2015.
Until 24 February
The acclaimed Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera has created a series of subtle interventions in and around Tate Modern. The work’s title is an ever-increasing figure: the number of people who migrated from one country to another last year added to the number of migrant deaths recorded so far this year – to indicate the sheer scale of mass migration and the risks involved. Bruguera’s main concerns are institutional power, borders and migration. Tate Modern, London Image: Tania Bruguera, 10,143,345 (detail), at Tate Modern, Photo Benedict Johnson
Until 30 November
Set in the 4,000-year-old Cypriot city of Larnaca, this new Biennale will host a main exhibition as well as a series of artistic and cultural events. The Biennale, this year themed Container & Content has been organised by a collective of artists, along with ARTION Cultural Association of Larnaca. Image: Larnaca Biennale 2018
Until 22 November 2018
LOOP is a platform for video art, taking the form of a festival, fair and talks. This, its 16th edition, will see LOOP centre its focus on production and the relationships between producers and products. The fair will exhibit the works of 42 artists presented by a selected group of invited galleries, in more than 60 locations throughout the city. A programme of talks to address the current debates of video production and reception will also be held. Image: Ariadna Guiteras, Strata at LOOP Barcelona
Photo: Imaging & Visual Resources Dept, MoMA
25. 11. 1 8 Until 30 November THROUGH MY EYE Roberta Zammit Cutajar will be having her first solo exhibition Through My Eye at the Chamber of Commerce in Valletta. Drawing inspiration from the loss of vision in her right eye the exhibition aims to shed light on an organisation close to her heart: Opening Doors Malta. This organisation gives individuals with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to learn music, drama and dance. Roberta is dedicating parts of the proceeds of her exhibition to the organisation, after witnessing firsthand, through her son’s experience, the benefits and joyous fulfillment the classes bring. openingdoors.org.mt
10. 12. 1 8 Until 6 January 2019 D R AW I N G I N T I NTO R E T TO ’ S V E N I C E Marking the 500th anniversary of the birth of Jacopo Tintoretto, this is the first exhibition since 1956 to explore the drawing practice of this major figure of the Venetian Renaissance. It offers an entirely new perspective on Tintoretto’s evolution as a draftsman, his individuality as an artist and his influence on a generation of painters in northern Italy. An introductory section of the exhibition will showcase works by Titian, Veronese, Bassano and other contemporaries. The Morgan Library and Museum, New York. Image: Tintoretto, Study After Michelangelo’s St Damian, ca 1545–50, black chalk, heightened with white, on beige paper. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, William H. Murphy Fund. Bridgeman Images.
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Travel / Turner Prize / London Nov – Dec –‘18
Highlights
LONDON
GEORGE MICALLEF EYNAUD >> Continued from cover
The images we are presented with through the mass media seem more content to dwell within a perverse simulacrum of the past or, indeed, to stake a claim for a past that never was. One need only think of the digitally ‘reimagined’ environments within so much franchise-based movie-making, reconstructing images from digital scratch or ‘de-aging’ actors to resurrect past roles, even going so far as to bring them back from the dead wholesale. One might also think of the nationalistic evocations of a ‘better’ past that have been repeatedly weaponised through the rhetoric of the campaign trail, appealing to a popular longing for a simpler time, far removed from the complex problems inbuilt into our globalised present. The moving image also holds a unique potential in helping us relate to historical events. By recording the present, it allows us to analyse the past – different kinds of pasts, from different perspectives – with a meticulousness and acumen often missing in other forms of visual communication. Where it trades on accessibility for ambiguity and complexity, the moving image in contemporary art practice has become a vital tool for the deconstruction of set conventions about identity in an increasingly interconnected and depersonalised world. Video is a temporal medium. It relies on the passage of time to convey its message. It can encompass various feelings, including boredom and impenetrability. Indeed, such emotions or, rather, the sense of stillness inherent in the long-takes and single camera format of a lot of the works on show at this year’s iteration of the Turner Prize, can become a powerful weapon in the artist’s arsenal. Such strategies force the viewer to contemplate even the most insignificant minutiae of the projected image, scanning the screen for any detail to latch unto, anything at all to come together into meaning. Now in its 33rd consecutive year, it is remarkable how far the Turner Prize has shifted, gravitating away from its spectacle-heavy roots in the 1990’s ‘Young British Artist’ art boom to a far more sober, probing overview of current concerns and new methodologies evident in contemporary art practice.
Naeem Mohaiemen, Tripoli Cancelled, 2017, single-channel video, Turner Prize 2018 exhibition installation view, Tate Britain. Photo: Tate Photography, Matt Greenwood
“Video seems to have become the natural medium of choice for a wide array of emerging creative voices keen to construct some sort of response to an increasingly bewildering digital world...”
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George Micallef Eynaud studied Fine Art at the Camberwell College of Arts and is currently based in London.
Travel / Turner Prize / London Nov – Dec –‘18 LONDON
By recording the present, the moving image allows us to analyse the past – different kinds of pasts, from different perspectives.
Naeem Mohaiemen, Tripoli Cancelled, 2017, single-channel video, film-still.
Luke Willis Thompson, autoportrait, 2017, 35mm, Chisenhale Gallery. Photo: Andy Keate
Charlotte Prodget, BRIDGIT, 2016, single-channel HD video, film-still
Naeem Mohaiemen, Two Meetings and a Funeral, 2017, three – channel video. Photo: © Michael Nast
Primarily, video seems to have become the natural medium of choice for a wide array of emerging creative voices keen to construct some sort of response to an increasingly bewildering digital world, one that is simultaneously so divided and evermore homogenised. The four practitioners selected for this year’s prize all demonstrate the ways in which digital technology and accessible video recording devices have had a profound impact on the way we see and understand the world around us. Subverting conventional filmic expectations and skewing the narrative form is at the heart of Charlotte Prodger’s practice. Working with ripped YouTube videos, 16mm film, spoken-word narratives and text, the Glasgow-based artist formulates densely layered ruminations on place in relation to personal identity. More specifically, she examines the way language informs both our notion of space and gendered constructs of identity from a non-binary perspective. In her 2016 film Bridgit, which was shot on an iPhone, Prodger built a complex narrative out of emotionally-charged snapshots of her everyday life. These take the form of recorded moments charting the landscape in relation to personal and social histories, compositing both language and image through a nuanced approach to a truly contemporary narrative.
Forensic Architecture, Counter-Investigations, ICA, Photo: Mark Blower
Another work comprises an entire investigation carried out by Forensic Architecture into the 2017 killing of a Bedouin man, Yaqub Musa Abu Al Qi’an, by Israeli police officers (The Long Duration of a Split Second (2018)). While the state has declared that Al Qi’an was killed while carrying out an act of terrorism, Forensic Architecture – the Goldsmiths College-based research agency founded by Eyal Weizman, comprising architects, journalists, lawyers and scientists – posits an alternative stance for the state’s culpability, using a range of cutting-edge digital technologies and research-based approaches to build a multi-layered case from a variety of perspectives. The choice of Forensic Architecture is an intriguing one as they comprise a collective of practitioners from various disciplines – not all of them art-related. Considering that a similar group of architects (Assemble) was awarded the prize in 2015, we can begin to understand how far the boundaries of what constitutes contemporary art, and those who make it, have changed. As our perception of contemporary art continues to broaden, so too does art’s ability to speak truth to power and address past injustices. There is a deep poignancy to the Forensic Architecture installation at the Tate Britain exhibition as, just as the group were shortlisted for the Prize, Israel closed the case on the
officers involved in the killing of Al Qi’an for good. Naeem Mohaiemen presents two more conventionally narrative films at the Tate. In Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017) the artist uses the historical narrative of the Non-Aligned Movement of the 1960s and 70s which aspired to form a socialist, secular utopia centred around countries from the Global South in response to the domineering strategies enacted by the Cold War superpowers. By using sourced archival footage filmed at early conferences of the Non-Aligned countries, Mohaiemen, who had previously been nominated for his participation in documenta 14, conjures up the ghostly presence of a host of past political powerheads, including figures such as Che Guevara and Yasser Arafat, interspersed with interviews with the historian Vijay Prashad. This footage gives the film a quasi-documentary feel that creates an intriguing sense of mediated dissonance between the events of the past and their continuing reverberations today. Continued pg.34 >>
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Review / Berlin / Art Week Nov – Dec –‘18 BERLIN
GABRIELE SPILLER
Karin Sander, 170h Le Plateau, 2014, Esther Schipper
white cubes + open houses
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Gabriele Spiller is a Swiss-German author and journalist who lives between Berlin and Gozo. She looks forward to playing a part in promoting Malta’s emerging art scene.
Review / Berlin / Art Week Nov – Dec –‘18 BERLIN
B
erlin Art Week focuses on contemporary works, but in the German capital traces of its history are never far away. The exhibits blend well with the often-evocative architecture and rough surfaces. So, from art fairs to private collections and institutional exhibitions to project rooms – the event offers something for every art aficionado. In the end, everybody seemed to be satisfied. This happens very seldom in a big city with very different interest groups. But this year’s Berlin Art Week, which ran from 26 to 30 September, exceeded all expectations, with about 120,000 visitors in less than a week. This is only the seventh edition of the event, despite Berlin’s status as a leading city for contemporary art. And therein lie the challenges of past editions and why the initiative was almost cancelled outright. Over time, it became more and more apparent that aesthetically ambitious projects alone could not raise enough money to become self-sustaining. Artists from all over the world have moved to Berlin, praising the city for its creative power and inexpensive way of living. The trouble was that collectors, who in fact did visit Berlin to gather fresh inspiration, continued buying
their art in London, Basel, Miami and the like. Now, in a joint-venture, the largest art fair in Germany, Art Cologne, and the former abc art berlin contemporary have joined forces to establish an art fair that is perhaps more conventional: Art Berlin, while Positions Berlin Art Fair (that has been held since 2014) remains a platform for younger galleries and artists. In a well-judged move, both events have relocated to hangars of the former Tempelhof Airport – although the organisers struggled (successfully) to hang lamps from the 23-metre-high ceilings. This piece of Nazi architecture, which dates from 1936, is one of Europe’s largest monuments and was the centre of the Berlin airlift of 1948/49 but has now been converted to an international symbol of freedom. For over 50 years, until its closure only 10 years ago, it served as both a civil and a commercial airport, and many a Berliner or visitor will remember the distinctive atmosphere of the huge building. Recently, parts of the complex have been used as refugee shelters, but access to the public is ordinarily restricted. And so, visitors were impressed to enter the history-charged hangars, which hosted 200 international galleries, while the former boarding areas outside served as a sculpture park.
Tony Oursler, 2016, Galerie Hans Mayer
The Art Berlin boasts big players such as Neugerriemschneider (showing Ai Weiwei, Olafur Eliasson and Pawel Althamer); Sprüth Magers (showing Gery Hume, Robert Irwin and Pamela Rosenkranz); Galerie Eigen + Art (Carsten Nicolai, Stella Hamberg) or Esther Schipper (Karin Sander). This year it also introduced a new salon format. This collective display, designed by Alessandro Bava and curated by Tenzing Barshee, presented almost 60 artists. Barshee revealed that the artists’ galleries paid a fee of €500 for each artwork shown in the salon. For those seeking hidden gems the Positions Berlin Art Fair was the place to be. With prices of smaller pieces starting at €900, their Selected Positions targeted the aspiring collector. Interestingly, many of the artists represented at the regular gallery stalls also exhibited here, simply on a smaller, and more economical, scale. Kunkel Fine Arts from Munich catered to the lovers of art of the 19th and 20th centuries for a change, with pictures of Otto Dix and DODO from the fashionable 1920s. Positions is not only a wonderful venue in which to discover lesser known galleries, but also provides a space for representatives from smaller countries such as Latvia. For example, the Maksla Xo Gallery pre- >>
DODO, Hinter Gittern, 1929, Kunkel Fine Art
Pamela Rosenkranz, Alien Blue Window, 2017, Sprüth Magers
VALLETTA
Malta meets Japan
T
he recent TRANSNATIONAL Tokyo Exhibition illuminated the interconnectivity in contemporary art between Japan and the West. French artist Julien Vinet who has a strong connection with Japan, participated along with Japanese artists Toru Ishii, Hiroki Yamamoto, Naoya Inose, Takahiro Ueda, Takatoku Nishi and Akira Taniguchi who have all spent time in London, Berlin and other parts of Europe. TRANSNATIONAL Tokyo also invited two artists from the Institute of Art Malta Language Programme - Akira Taniguchi and Takatoku Nishi - to participate. The exhibition, which took place in Valletta in October, showcased the diverse media used by the artists, including silk dyeing, video, oils and mixed media.
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Review / Berlin / Art Week
Highlights
Nov – Dec –‘18 BERLIN
“ Berlin Art Week is not only about the fairs ” >> sented emerging Latvian graphic artist Paulis Liepa (b. 1978). The aesthetics of his work hark back to the graphic culture of the 1960s and 70s and the vintage touch is heightened by scratches and layers of glue and paint. With subtle irony about the obsession of graphic artists with the perfect image, this man from Riga deliberately ignores any art-world etiquette. Another very well-received presentation was that by Meno Parkas Galerija from Lithuania. Ceslovas Lukenskas (b. 1959), a dean of Vilnius Academy of Arts and also an independent musician and performer, visualised an installation of wooden archetypical symbols. He burnt these hearts and crosses and half-moons to charcoal and put them in a framing of used windows. Cremates is a very strong work, touching on particular traumatic experiences of humanity in recent times. But Berlin Art Week is not only about the fairs. One of the highlights was certainly Rebecca Horn’s transformation of St Hedwig’s Cathedral into a timeless room with a Glowing Core. Sixteen horizontal sculptures – huge reflecting funnels hanging from the dome, accompanied by sounds from New Zealand composer Hayden Chrisholm – transformed the empty church COMIC
into a surreal structure. At the same time, the Berliner Festspiele offered immersive art in a kind of planetarium tent as an urban intervention. And history comes into play again at the private Boros and Feuerle Collections, stored as they are in World War II bunkers. Also definitely worth a mention was PalaisPopulaire, the newly opened culture platform of Deutsche Bank, at one of the most prestigious addresses in Berlin: the Princess Palace at Unter den Linden 5. The Deutsche Bank collection consists of 50,000 works, so interesting exhibitions are not hard to come by here. Major contemporary institutions such as Berlinische Galerie, Hamburger Bahnhof, Thomas Olbrecht’s me Collectors Room, c/o Berlin, Martin-Gropius-Bau and many more vernissages, award ceremonies, artist talks and, of course, parties make an exciting, art-packed week. Friday night is always reserved for the 300 galleries to stay open until 9pm, and then continue celebrating. With around 5,000 artists in town, that is not difficult! The next Berlin Art Week takes place in September 12 – 15, 2019.
TURNER PRIZE
Continued from pg. 31 In Mohaiemen’s second film, Tripoli Cancelled (2017), a lone figure stalks through the seemingly post-apocalyptic remains of Athens’s Ellinikon Airport, designed by the Finnish architect Eero Saarinen in the 1960s but abandoned since 2001. Recalling the lonely figures who haunt the wastelands of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, the elderly protagonist is intended to act as a stand-in for the artist’s father who, as a surgeon travelling from Bangladesh to Libya sometime in the mid-1970s, misplaced his passport and became stranded at this very airport. Once again, we have a strange merging of the personal and the societal, the past and the present, fact and fiction, all coalescing through an emotional and meditative journey. Finally, Willis Thompson presents an intriguing update of Warhol’s screen -tests through a series of engaging 35mm blackand-white filmed portraits. Also included is Cemetery of Uniforms and Liveries (2016), filmed portraits of the descendants of Dorothy ‘Cherry’ Groce, shot by police in Brixton in 1985, and Joy Gardner, killed by police during a deportation raid in Crouch End in 1993, and Human (2018), a photographic study of an intriguing piece by British artist Donald Rodney, who suffered from sickle cell anaemia and pinned together scraps of his own shed skin to form a small house. © Bruce Eynaud
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Thompson’s most affecting piece, however, is autoportrait (2017), in which the artist
collaborated with Diamond Reynolds, the young black woman who live-streamed the shooting of her partner Philando Castile at the hands of a police officer during a traffic stop in Minnesota in 2016. This killing, which has become emblematic of a much wider spate of racialised police violence in America, is extremely contentious territory for any artist to tackle and, indeed, Thompson’s identity as a New Zealander of mixed white and Fijian origin proved problematic to many people who felt that the artist was exploiting issues of race to generate spectacle, profit or simply raise his own profile, and indeed activists from the BBZ group protested on the opening night of the Turner Prize. The work, which simply portrays a head-on, filmic portrait of Reynolds standing in contemplation, or a state of wordless mourning, is as moving as it is direct. Her expression is almost inscrutable and blown-up to largerthan-life proportions she seems to engage with the viewer in an intensely personal silent dialogue from across geopolitical and temporal boundaries. For this reason alone, autoportrait manages to create a succinct summation of the many profound and important ideas presented within this year’s very worthy and thought-provoking offering from four extremely intriguing artists. Turner Prize 2018 is at Tate Britain in London until 6 January 2019. The winner will be announced on 4 December.
Christine Xuereb Seidu founded Christine X Art Gallery in 2004 after a university degree in Art History and Anthropology. She now lives in Ghana where she continues to explore African art and culture, after handing her gallery over to its new owner
Art News / Africa / Congo Nov – Dec –‘18 AFRICA
CHRISTINE XUEREB SEIDU
Congo’s (Kinshasa) artistic renaissance
A
rt from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been amongst the most eagerly sought after in the African art market because of its vibrant, highly original, approach, even after its turbulent and painful colonial history. This is apparent from the fact that London’s international auction house, Bonhams, recently held an exhibition of important Congolese modern and contemporary art entitled The Congo Beat – Modern and Contemporary Congolese Art, from 30 September to 4 October, a few months after Sotheby’s second sale dedicated to modern and contemporary African art, at which the DRC performed particularly well.
of African masks, whilst also referring to cubism. Another Congolese artist who uses line as the central element in what he terms ‘monochromatic symbiotic cubism’ is Houston Maludi, who took much of his inspiration from Picasso and Braque. The tragedy of war is a subject that only a few artists portray, and one of them is Freddy Tsimba, who builds sculptures from scraps. Another sculptor who uses recycled materials is the prolific artist Bodys Isek Kingelez, who builds Utopia- themed architectural landscapes, influenced by the capital Kinshasa, advising Congolese political leaders to see the country as he does. His sculptures are currently being exhibited at his solo show City of Dreams at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, until 1 January 2019. Sculptor Alfred Liyolo who, unlike Freddy Tsimba and Bodys Isek Kingelez, worked with hard-gilded brass as opposed to reusing used materials, also preferred to depict human relations through smooth sculptures that evoked movement.
Although some Congolese artwork did sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars overseas, many Congolese artists continue to live in poverty. Artists work from slum studios and abandoned buildings in Kinshasa, and materials such as paint and canvas are constantly being brought to them by foreign patrons, although some artists have adopted the use of recycled materials from when art materials were not easily accessible. Contemporary art in the DRC has come a long way since Congolese artist Djilatendo, one of the ‘Illustrators of the Congo’, left his mark as the forerunner of Congolese art. Congolese popular paintings came along soon after, pushing boundaries through explicit messages, mostly political. Artists of this school of popular art included Cheri Samba, Cheri Benga, Cheri Cherin, Maitre Syms, Sam Ilus, Shula and Moke. Artists in the DRC tend to deal with real life rather than abstract. Most recent artworks are still portraying a sharp political awareness and frustration with
the country’s continuous exploitation by the West, as well as anger over corruption. Congolese artist Sammy Baloji uses photography to explore the complex history of the DRC and Vithois Mwilambwe Bondo offers a sense of hope from the violent turmoil of the country’s recent history, using his brilliant imagination in his collage artwork.
working men because he believes men should shoulder the responsibility for serving others. Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga, perhaps the country’s most recognised artist, also depicts daily life through his use of patterns and textures, fusing music and fashion pop culture in his bright acrylic paintings, exploring themes like trans-cultural identity.
Other artists prefer to portray daily life in the capital Kinshasa, as well as in the rural parts of the DRC. One such artist is Papy Malambi Dibani, an expressionist artist who depicts portraits of
Also using brightly painted portraits with plywood glued layers, artist Aime Mpane displays a fundamental connection between place and personal identity, with lines over forms that remind us
If you find yourself in Virginia between 10 November and 24 February, do call at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for the exhibition Congo Masks: Masterpieces from Central Africa, where 140 Congolese ritual masks form a visually compelling display of cultures. From 23 October to 10 March, the International Museum of Modest Arts (MIAM) in Sète, France, will be exhibiting Kinshasa Chroniques, an exhibition comprised of the works of 70 Congolese artists visualising how they see the capital city. Although the political situation in Kinshasa’s Congo is still tense, the artistic renaissance continues.
BRITAIN
Brexit Concerns
Concerns are being raised about the implications of Brexit on the art world. While it is expected that import tax exemptions will remain in place following Britain’s exit from the European Union under agreed Harmonised System procedures for the classification of artworks, VAT issues may not be so straightforward. Recently, the UK has enjoyed the lowest VAT rates of any EU state, attracting dealers and commercial galleries. Rising post-Brexit rates within the UK, coupled with EU states competitively lowering their own rates, may result in a shift in markets. What is evident, is that the uncertainty surrounding Brexit means that UK-based art dealers are unable to plan for a post-Brexit market. www.mutualart.com
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Review / V18 / Art Market
Highlights
Nov – Dec –‘18 VALLETTA
ART MARKET
MARGERITA PULÈ
A Polystyrene Legacy: Valletta 2018 in Review
Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale Christies, New York 15 NOVEMBER 2018 | 7.00 PM
Transparadiso, Times of Dilemma, within Dal-Bahar Madwarha
Charlie Cauchi, Latitude 36
hey’re still standing, those white polysty- rene gures, unimag- inatively illustrating Maltese proverbs to the city of Valletta. Opening the European Capital of Culture year, the misguided and much-derided V18 installations – Hekk jghid il-Malti – are still around; a missing finger here, a broken tail there, but still stoically hanging on, waiting for the year to end. And they are, perhaps, symbolic of a year that promised so, so much but that, in the end, was ill-conceived and woefully mis-curated. There were some beautiful moments. The haunting Who by Fire by Susan Philipsz, filled a dignified cistern under the streets of Valletta with an eerie sound: her own voice singing Leonard Cohen’s song of the same name. There was also Transparadiso’s dramatic Times of Dilemma, part of the same Dal Bahar Madwara exhibition curated by Maren Richter, in which ghana singers performed across Marsamxett Harbour between St Roche Chapel in Valletta and Manoel Island in Gzira. And there was Austin Camilleri’s Disgha, a series of texts carved in stone at various locations around the Maltese islands. Hopefully, these texts will last longer than their polystyrene colleagues.
Khouri’s Sejjah lil-Malta earlier in the year, was at odds with Malta’s current immigration policies and felt like innocent do-gooding, in a context of an ECoC whose populist rhetoric is inseparable from those of the government that creates such policies.
T
There were also some insightful, if not ironic moments. Take, for example, Manaf Halbouni’s Uprooted, billed as a statement on gentrification, over-development and displacement. In a city where property prices have risen sky-high – as a result of speculation linked to the ECoC title – residents sleeping in cars might become a reality sooner than we think. Charlie Cauchi’s Latitude 36 spoke of the Maltese diaspora, and proposed a different debate about migration. But her compelling insight into how these communities survived, and how their cultures adapted to their new surroundings, was at odds with the V18 hegemony of a united, flawless Maltese culture. The RIMA project also spoke of migration and displacement, with a sensitivity towards those who find themselves far from home and without ‘territory’. But this, like Tania El
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There were some surreal – and genuinely funny – moments, such as David Pisani’s Subversive Semiotics within the Fragmenta Malta series, curated by Bettina Hutschek: in essence, a billboard located on the Coast Road at Bahar ic-Caghaq, showing a huge photograph of the back of the same billboard. What passers-by made of this large installation, and the black-tie satirical launch that took place on the side of the road below the billboard, was never documented. Heba Amin’s Operation Sunken Sea was also surreal, but somehow beautiful in its combination of stoicism and satire. There were also some bizarre curatorial decisions. Take, for example, the work of radical Austrian collective, Time’s Up, entitled Cabinet of Futures, that was hidden away in a parish hall somewhere in Hal-Lija. Perhaps the challenge of finding the exhibition was part of the ECoC experience. Or the opening date of Constellation Malta, curated by Rosa Martinez, for some unfathomable reason on the same weekend as the opening of Malta’s new contemporary art space, effectively eclipsing the work of one of the world’s most respected curators. There were disappearances as well: whatever happened to the work of radical food designers Honey and Bunny? Planned to shed light on the tuna-fishing industry, this project is nowhere to be seen. Order of Knowledge by talented political artist Jonas Staal was also promised in the programme at the beginning of the year, in collaboration with the European Graduate School, but no mention of him is made in relation to the EGS lectures which took place without him in October. In the end, maybe the smaller exhibitions and installations made it worthwhile. Like Deema Shahin’s 1001
Francis Bacon – 1909 - 1992 Study of Henrietta Moraes Laughing. Oil on canvas, 1969 14 x 12 in. Est: $14 – $18 Million
David Smith – 1906 - 1965 5 Ciarcs, 1963 Stainless steel 153 1/4 x 65 1/4 x 24 1/2 in. Est: $10 – $15 Million
David Hockney (b.1937) Sprungbrett mit Schatten (Paper Pool 14), 1978 Coloured, pressed paper pulp 72 x 85 1/2 in. Est: $6 – $8 Million
Pierre Soulages (b. 1919) Peinture 186 x 143 cm, Oil on canvas 73 1/4 x 56 1/4 in. Est: $10 – $15 Million
Dreams in Gozo, or Pam Baldacchino’s Deep Shelter with patients of the Oncology Department at Mater Dei Hospital. At lease these, and other touching exhibitions and projects, gave communities access to art and creativity, working directly with artists and seeing work created from their experiences. Other worthwhile initiatives that seemingly went under the mass-marketing radar, were the residency project Transformer by Blitz in Valletta, and the Utopian Nights series. There has been much conjecture about the V18 legacy: five, ten years from now, one wonders what will remain of those polystyrene figures? Three new infrastructural projects have been launched in 2018; three births induced prematurely to fit the ECoC deadline: the Valletta Design Cluster, MUZA and MICAS are all billed as legacy projects. Maybe, without the pressure and fanfare of the 2018 title, they will fare better in the long-term. Valletta was awarded the title of European Capital of Culture in 2013, and opened its celebrations in January. Since then, its partner city – Leeuwarden- Fryslân 2018 – broke off diplomatic contact, while the Chair of the committee that awarded Valletta the title anounced that he would boycott the celebrations. Meanwhile, the worldwide association of writers – PEN International – as well as 72 MEPS, called for the resignation of the Chairman of Valletta 2018. A Maltese city will next be eligible to apply for the title of EcoC in 2031. The author was involved in the bidding and preparatory phases of Valletta 2018.
Design News / Classics Nov – Dec –‘18 ADVERTISING
A Continuous Evolution Campari, invented by Gaspare Campari between 1862 and 1867, has always been associated with innovation and creativity.
“Campari began working with emerging artists and artistic movements, giving them the freedom to create and experiment.”
Campari’s advertising history made its debut in 1899 with a concise price list in amongst other adverts placed in the main Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. No slogans or images, just prices, an address and the Campari signature. It was a success. Then Campari began working with emerging artists and artistic movements, giving them the freedom to create and experiment. Art made its entry into Campari’s advertising whilst the art itself was evolving. Sacchetti, Cappiello, Dudovich, Mora, Metlicovitz, and Nizzoli were just some of the artists who tested themselves with Campari’s unique red. Futurism introduced new values to advertising: true urban art, a new creative territory for artists. Following the Futurist’s style, the company’s advertising changed direction and the Italian painter, Fortunato Depero, was the bond that linked the company with this artistic movement and in 1927 Depero’s intense artistic advertising began culminating with the famous ‘Numero Unico Futurista Campari 1931’. In a climate of evolution, such as that of the ’50s and ’60s, where mass consumerism reigned in Italian households, advertising adapted itself to new styles and at the same time started new trends. One invention profoundly changed daily life in Italy: the television. Among the first companies to understand the importance of television, Campari’s had its creative boom in ‘62, when the Campari advert stood out from the others becoming a cornerstone of classic Italian television advertising. Yet, there wasn’t just television. In those years two important artists tested themselves with the production of Campari posters to create advertisements which have become vintage works of art: Franz Marangolo and Bruno Munari. Big names such as Fellini and Tarsem as directors, and Kelly Le Brock, Eva Herzigova, Fernanda Lessa, Salma Hayek, Eva Mendes, and Jessica Alba are some of stars who over the years have been tied to the Campari brand name and helped contribute to the creation and definition of a distinctive and unassailable advertising territory for the brand. A territory that is red, tinged with the brand’s hallmark of transgression, which for Campari means going over the limits of convention, using contrasting elements within the images which help to stimulate consumer imagination.
Campari is marketed and distributed by Farsons Beverage Imports Co. Ltd. Trade Enquiry: 23814400
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Books / Francoise Gilot Nov – Dec –‘18
“The cloth is a cocoon,” she notes, “and in this latent metamorphosis lies the magic of the curved line.”
Book: Francoise Gilot’s Travel Sketchbook
French artist Françoise Gilot, born in 1921, can look back on a long history. As a painter of the Nouvelle École de Paris after the war, her work hovers between abstraction and figuration, drawing as much on nature and everyday life as on moods and imagination. She has published several books, not just her famous Life with Picasso, in which she recounts her experiences of 10 years at the side of the most famous artist of the 20th century, but also poetry and stories with her own illustrations. This fold-out box set presents a hardback facsimile edition of three sketchbooks made on Gilot’s travels between 1974 and 1981. Collecting direct impressions and abstract reflections, they are suffused with the distinct atmosphere of these places: Venice, India, and Senegal.
Gilot travels to Venice in the summer of 1974. Her regular visits to the floating city as a child have made a lasting impression, and she feels a deep, continued connection. Her sketchbook drawings are made with a subtle palette, centered on different shades of a watery blue. Views of the city are mixed with reimaginations of the canals and cityscape, yet it is above all the spirit, history, and myth of Venice that animates her work. She also pays tribute to its art with various pages characterizing her forebears: the Bellinis, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Veronese, Titian, Tintoretto. Gilot mixes writing with the illustrations, her beautifully organic lettering becoming part of the drawings in which she depicts the canals, the cafés, the lovers at the water’s edge. The second sketchbook is from Gilot’s trip to India in late 1979. She fills it with
drawings while out on the streets and sitting on bumpy plane rides between cities. The sketches, mostly in black and white, capture people on the road, market stalls, cows and other animals, and wall advertisements for the coming election. Central to the sketchbook are the figures of women, working or carrying a load, always clad in impeccable saris whose folds especially attract the artist: “The cloth is a cocoon,” she notes, “and in this latent metamorphosis lies the magic of the curved line.” In 1981 Gilot visits Senegal, where she is impressed by the people she encounters, their movements and meetings, life in the circle huts and on marketplaces. Her sketchbook is almost jewel-like in its colourful intensity, juxtaposed with deepinked black-and-white line drawings. Again,
we see many women in flowing garments, their poses like ornaments on the page; we see plants and landscapes, sometimes clear and sometimes as form, moving in and out of abstraction. The three sketchbooks are accompanied by an additional booklet containing an introduction by Hans Werner Holzwarth, a conversation between Gilot and Thérèse Crémieux on the artist’s work and travels, and translations of the handwritten text within the drawings. Also available as three Art Editions of 60 copies respectively (No. 1–180), each with a separate lithograph signed and created by Gilot especially for this production. Françoise Gilot. Three Travel Sketchbooks: Venice, India, Senegal costs €150 with free shipping to Malta. www.taschen.com
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Read about the exhibition hosted in Malta in the following pages.
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