24
17
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INTERVIEW The playful paradox of SJ Fuerst’s hyperreal superwomen
REVIEW Female modernist artists see the light of day in Vienna
COMMEN T Konrad Buhagiar on art, politics, beauty and satire
€2.00 WHERE SOLD
No:6
+ LISA GWEN BALDACCHINO
OPINION
11
“Yet, isn’t that the sheer beauty of public art? It’s a ‘phenomenon’, whereby an artwork or monument, irrespective of size, shape or colour, is placed in a strategic hard-toignore space, demanding some form of public engagement – positive or negative.” Opinion pg.11
Sèvres Goliathus Scarabaeidae, Gilcée print on paper, by Magnus Gjoen
The cuts endure, as does the unknown
T NEWS: Tracy Emin at the White Cube DESIGN: The Bauhaus centenary and the grand tour of OPINION: Women in art in Malta ART NEWS: Senegalese art makes a global splash Modernism BOOKS: The environment in comic form INTERVIEW: Ritty Tacsum’s mysterious world REVIEW: Pierre Bonnard, colour and life ART NEWS: Mapplethorpe exhibition in Naples
#beinspired
he work of Lucio Fontana enjoys the same sensorial acknowledgement as that of a song heard in passing that stops you short in your tracks and the melody of which unquestionably sparks memory: you know it, but you’re not precisely clear about who it’s by, where you first encountered it or why you really, really like it. >> Pg.44
Lucio Fontana, ‘Neon Structure for the Ninth Milan Triennial’, 1951/2019, Glass tube and neon, Reconstruction authorised by Fondazione Lucio Fontana
ANN DINGLI
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Welcome / Team / Inside Mar – May –‘19
Editor-in-Chief Lily Agius (+356) 9929 2488 Editor Margerita Pulè Creative Director Chris Psaila Assistant Designer Nicholas Cutajar Sales Manager Lily Agius (+356) 9929 2488 Contributors Lisa Gwen Baldacchino Konrad Buhagiar Sandro Debono Joanna Delia Ann Dingli Richard England Judy Falzon Karin Grech Bruce Micallef Eynaud George Micallef Eynaud Giulia Privitelli Gabriele Spiller Christine Xuereb Seidu Artpaper is owned / produced by Lily Agius and Chris Psaila [ V ] Publications Supported by / Malta AP Valletta art..e Gallery Arthall Bee Wise Campari China Cultural Centre, Malta Eden Cinemas Edward Lowell Gabriel Caruana Foundation Heritage Malta Hublot Kite Group Lazuli Art Gallery La Bottega Art Bistro LogoGrafixExpress Malta School of Art Malta Society of Arts Malta Tourism Authority Manoel Theatre . MUZA People & Skin Raymond Weil Risette Spazju Kreattiv Studio 87 University of Malta Valletta Contemporary Vamp Magazine Vee Gee Bee Art Shop Victor Pasmore Gallery Supported by / International Ashmolean Museum Bauhaus Archive Belvedere Museum Christies Fimbank Louis Vuitton Foundation Louvre Madre Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Met Breuer MoMA National Gallery Nicolas Van Patrick Norval Foundation Soho Radio Sotheby’s Taschen Tate Britain Victoria and Albert Museum Vitra White Cube Bermondsey
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rt provides respite from the mundane. By choosing to step into an exhibition, you enter someone else’s world – the artist and curator’s – in which you are compelled to feel something that you can relate to, or even disagree with. Public art doesn’t require you to make that choice, it is seen by all walks of life, out in the open, and needs to engage us all – but how? Inside this issue Lisa Gwen Baldacchino discusses public art in Malta and its development and impact (page 11) – a topic which will be explored again in Artpaper’s next issue.
page 36); and Karen Grech discovers unique paintings by the forgotten female artists active in Vienna during the first half of the twentieth century at The Lower Belvedere (until 19 May, page 17). Our Berlin correspondent Gabrielle Spiller writes about the impact of Bauhaus after its formation 100 years ago (page 8); Sandro Debono falls for Frank Gehry’s Louis Vuitton Foundation museum building in Paris (page 22); and Christine Xuereb Seidu reports on the latest scoop from Africa – specifically, ‘dynamic Senegal’ (page 43).
In this issue, our writers bring you highlights, exhibitions and events happening all around the world: Ann Dingli checks out the retrospective exhibition for Lucio Fontana at the Met Breuer in New York (open until 14 April, page 44); George Eynaud explores the Pierre Bonnard retrospective at the Tate Modern in London (running until 6 May,
Meanwhile, back in Malta, we interview photographic artist Ritty Tacsum ahead of her solo show at Palazzo de la Salle (open until 28 March, page 34); and the American painter SJ Fuerst who lives in Gozo and is exhibiting at Lily Agius Gallery (until 20 April, page 24). Professor Richard England looks at the relationship between architecture and poetry (page 27), architect Konrad Buhagiar explores the idea behind
ART NEWS
SPOTLIGHTS / EVENTS
05. Tracy Emin at White Cube Bermondsey
05. Art Market Record year for Christie’s
29. Residencies Gozo, Malta and online
19. Jeff Koons Art at the Ashmolean
35. MoMA Renovations in final phase
31. What’s On Visual art events in Malta
43. Senegal What’s hot in West Africa
33. International A selection of global exhibitions
INTERVIEWS
38. Mapplethorpe Exhibition in Naples
24. SJ Fuerst Realism meets Pop in Gozo 34. Q&A Ritty Tacsum’s intimate photography
REVIEWS 17. City of Women Female Artists in Vienna
BOOKS / ARCHITECTURE 27. Poetry + Architecture A perfect relationship 47. No Man’s Land Cartoons for the environment
44. Lucio Fontana Retrospective at the Met
COMMENT / OPINION 11. Public Art The impact on urban environment 13. Feminism Women, Art + Malta 20. Politics When politics and art collide 22. Louis Vuitton Foundation A floating masterpiece
08. Bauhaus 100th Anniversary celebrations
This issue is dedicated to our proof reader Judy Falzon.
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 31 March, 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
36. Pierre Bonnard and the magic of colour
DESIGN
politics in portraiture (page 20) and Joanna Delia uncovers how art history in Malta has historically favoured art by men (page 13). Let art and design take you on a journey, and we will see you again with another edition in June. If you would like to be involved in Artpaper you can contact us by email on info@artpaper.press.
Winners from previous issue:(1) Antonella Antonioni has won a year-pass to all Heritage Malta sites and (2) Matthew Castillo has won a €20 voucher from VeeGeeBee Art Shop
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Art News / On the Scene Mar – May –‘19
03
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ON the SCENE.
“The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.” Marina Abramovic
BOOKS
REVIEW / INTERVIEW
DESIGN
ART SALES
SPOTLIGHT
OPINION
ART NEWS
01
Louise Bourgeois’ Spider Tours Brazil One of the first arachnid sculptures made by Louise Bourgeois has left its home at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo, and is currently on a year-long tour of Brazil. The colossal work, made during the 1990s, is being exhibited at various cities around the country. The work was first taken to New York to be restored and strengthened, since it was not originally made strong enough to withstand travel. Since being ‘filled’ with bronze, it now weighs more than 700kg, and is disassembled into 10 pieces for transportation. From the Inhotim Institute in Minas Gerais, Spider will travel next to the Iberê Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre in May then to the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba in August.
03
Tracey Emin: A Fortnight of Tears Love her or hate her, Tracey Emin is back with an exhibition of neon, sculpture, paintings, film, photography and drawing at White Cube Bermondsey, London. Onlookers are pulled into Emin’s experience of tragic life events - rape, abortion and bereavement. It seems that the artist is forever fixated on her past and her art always reflects this, but there is no doubt that this body of work deserves some of our time. You can’t help but sympathise with her, for exposing her deepest and most debilitating emotions. The art is a result of, or part of the reason for, these emotional events in her life, and there they are to be seen - loud and clear! Tracey Emin: A Fortnight of Tears, is at White Cube Bermondsey, London, until 7 April.
02
2018 Sees Record Sales for Christie’s Christie’s reported its best year ever for art sales in 2018, with overall sales totalling €6.05 billion for the year (up from €5.8 billion in 2017). This comes partly thanks to the sale of the collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller, which set a new record for a private collection sale at the house, bringing in a total of €737 million. Also up were Christie’s online-only sales, which grew by 16 percent in 2018 for a total of €73.4 million; online-only sales also continued to drive the biggest share of new buyers, with 41 percent of Christie’s first-time clients coming through online sales.
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Art News / Europe Mar – May –‘19 IRELAND
LONDON
Food Research at the V&A
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he Victoria & Albert Museum in London will host the interdisciplinary exhibition FOOD: Bigger than the Plate, which will explore current experiments at every stage of the food system, and how innovative individuals, communities and organisations are radically re-inventing how we grow, distribute and experience food. The exhibition will feature over 70 contemporary projects, new commissions and creative collaborations by artists and designers working with chefs, farmers, scientists and local communities. Vienna-based artists and food designers Honey & Bunny, who in 2017 researched the tuna-fishing industry in Malta, will be creating four films for the exhibition entitled food | RULES | tomorrow. The project will research how everyday
food conventions hinder the fight for a sustainable lifestyle, and will develop ‘revolutionary table-manners’ to stop climate change and to develop a sustainable future. FOOD: Bigger than the Plate, co-curated by Catherine Flood and May Rosenthal Sloan will be on show at the V & A from 18 May until 20 October.
A Very Different Coastline Maltese artist Henry Falzon is currently collaborating with Sligo Tourism on a series of intensely coloured Irish landscapes. His blog, Viewing Sligo from the Outside In, combines tales of his experiences along the rugged West Coast of Ireland with his trusted sketchbook and drawings from his travels.
Table manners, Honey & Bunny, photo credit Stummerer Hablesreiter Akita Koeb
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Come on surf-boy, 2018, Henry Falzon
n a tour of Ireland, Falzon took the time to immortalise what he saw in highly-pigmented chalk pastels. Blue Maltese skies were traded for grey, windy and overcast scenes, crowded streets were exchanged for leisurely, sprawling roads, and commercialised coastlines were replaced by wild and raw natural pristine beaches and coves. Gone were the strong Maltese shadows cast by glaring sunshine; instead, Henry focused on open vistas, the contrast of urban landscapes, heavy skies and a twinkle of blue skies thrown in for consolation. In the absence of vivid colours, Irish greys offered just as much excitement and depth as a Mediterranean summer. Falzon toured much of Ireland, but was particularly drawn to the northern county of Sligo. In his words: “To a landscape artist, Sligo presents a challenge that yields only to the dedicated. Its coast is beyond wild and verges on the quasi-spiritual; this is a paradise for the outdoor rugged souls.” Falzon loved Sligo and Sligo responded, offering windswept harbours and craggy sand-dunes to his artist’s eye. Henry Falzon’s work and writing can be seen on www.sligotourism.ie/2018/11/20/viewing-sligo-from-the-outside-in and more Irish work can be seen on Henry’s website www.henryfalzon.com
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Art News / Europe Mar – May –‘19 PARIS
Louvre: Celebrates RecordBreaking Year
Vue de la pyramide © Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN - Grand Palais - Olivier Ouadah
More people than ever visited the Louvre in Paris during 2018, with 10.2 million people visiting the museum, representing a 25 percent rise from the previous year. This figure was, in part, thanks to the year’s flagship exhibition, Delacroix, which proved to be the most successful exhibition ever held at the Louvre, drawing 540,000 visitors. The museum also benefited from the huge publicity generated by Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s video Apeshit, which was shot at the museum in June and featured works such as Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. Elsewhere in the world, interest in the Louvre was bolstered by the Louvre Abu Dhabi, drawing one million visitors during its first operational year.
Magnus Gjoen at Milan’s Salone del Mobile Pair a grenade launcher with Delft Blue, and what you’ve captured is the essence of Magnus Gjoen’s creative vision. Through life and death, strength and fragility, fine art and war, Gjoen revels in the unusual space that is created by opposing aesthetics. With Norwegian roots and a London upbringing, Gjoen’s distinct artistic style emerged from the fashion and design industries across Europe, while today, Gjoen’s works hang on the walls of Kate Moss’ London home.
This April, Gjoen shall be unveiling his latest interpretation of creative contrasts through a series of sculptural pieces created in collaboration with the Florentine studio, Baldi Home Jewels. The 58th edition of the Salone del Mobile Milan runs from 9 to 14 April this year. For more information log on to www.salonemilano.it and www.magnusgjoenart.com
Gjoen’s latest limited-edition artwork, J’Ayme À Jamais, explores the strength and fragility of the heart, alluding to its destructive force while encasing it within the robes of a classical masterpiece.
MALTA
Digital Residency In a different kind of residency, Malta-based artist Letta Shtohryn recently shifted her practice online, as artist-in-residence on the online platform for artistic research, Digital Artist Residency. The online platform provides space for digital artists to create and display new work, providing support and online space for artists working within digital or online contexts. During her residency Shtohryn researched her family’s migration from Siberian labour camps to the new settlements of Kazakh steppe during the 1960s. While doing so, she also researched world economic, political and environmental events occurring in Kazakhstan at that time, uploading her work to the Residency website as she worked. Since then, Shtohryn has held a series of online screenings and web-based works, available to the public at pre-set times. www.digitalartistresidency.org/artists/letta-shtohryn
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Design / Bauhaus / Germany
Highlights
Mar – May –‘19 GERMANY
GABRIELE SPILLER
The Bauhaus Centenary + the Grand Tour of Modernism
Haus Gropius, Bruno Fioretti Marquez Architekten, photo © Tillmann Franzen © VG Bild-Kunst Bonn 2018
Paul Klee, Carpet (Kelim), 1927, ink on paper
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Rammelsberg ore mine, © Tillmann Franzen
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.
Design / Bauhaus / Germany Mar – May –‘19 GERMANY
D
o you know Bauhaus? Certainly, you may say. But a homogenous Bauhaus movement never actually existed. The Staatliches Bauhaus (State Bauhaus), an art school founded in Weimar in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius, soon became something closer to a school of design and moved to Dessau.
the Frankfurter Küche, the first fitted kitchen, was a Bauhaus feature designed by architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. She researched how her friends worked in a kitchen, how they mixed cake batter and how they placed a saucer on a shelf. This provided her with the measurements and layout for the new standard kitchen, which came to replace the free assembled kitchens that were more common until the 1920s.
It then moved to – and closed in – Berlin as a private education institute, all in just 14 years of experimenting in the free and applied arts, architecture, design and educational methods. Yet the impact of the Bauhaus was so strong that, for some, the term is synonymous with modernity, especially with regard to buildings. This year, the Grand Tour of Modernism, celebrating Bauhas’ 100th anniversary, will tell you all you need to know about the movement.
Since the overall concept of Bauhaus was to create a Gesamtkunstwerk, that is, a total work of art, the students of the Bauhaus School practiced many diverse disciplines, including photography, music, theatre and even dance. They created graphic design and advertising, for both themselves and for third parties. Indeed, Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius was not only an innovative architect, he was also an excellent salesman: the ability to market new design products played a strong role in the Bauhaus’ success story.
The Bauhaus was a creative school among many others, which emerged after the devastating First World War. It radically broke with the grandmotherly Belle Epoque style: the Bauhaus crowd lived the revolutionary reforms of the time and light and lightness were now on the agenda. The homely British Arts and Crafts Movement, the playful French Art Nouveau and its German counterpart Jugendstil had to quite literally leave the living-room. The Bauhaus masters and their students redesigned everything – from homes and furniture to lamps and carpets, kitchenware and toys. Their aim was to design something decent and honest, a product that would stand the test of time. Ideally, you would only buy a teapot once in your life. Long before ‘sustainability’ was a buzz-word, the Bauhaus incorporated it into its developments. For example,
The Bauhaus aesthetic was stark and functional, thus the expression ‘form follows function’, but products often came in small numbers and were not cheaply-priced. Despite the claim that everybody should be able to enjoy Bauhaus design, not everyone could afford it. As a consequence, Bauhaus suffered during the worldwide economic crisis of 1929 and was finally closed in 1933. Fast-forward to 2019, and no less than to ‘rethink the world’ is the motto that the German Bauhaus Association 2019 has adopted for its multitude of events, exhibitions and communication projects. New Bauhaus museums are being built in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin, while hundreds of activities are scheduled to take place during the year.
For Bauhaus enthusiasts, a Grand Tour of Modernism is recommended: a tour of significant buildings showcasing a hundred years of modern architecture. Some are impressive UNESCO World Heritage sites, while others are single houses that can only be viewed from outside. Bauhaus town halls, an employment office, municipal baths, observation towers, power plants, churches, and a crematory are all included in this tour. The Grand Tour also takes in the birthplace of the Bauhaus in Weimar, the former Grand Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts, designed and later directed by Henry van der Velde and, of course, the iconic Bauhaus school building in Dessau-Rosslau, built in 1925/26 by Gropius himself. Also nearby are the Masters’ Houses: the villa of the Gropius family and the semi-detached houses of Moholy-Nagy/Feininger, Muche/Schlemmer and Kandinsky/Klee. Surprisingly, these professors of the Bauhaus lived as tenants in the houses they designed themselves: they were built by the city of Dessau. Meanwhile, the Bauhaus Archiv/Museum für Gestaltung (the Bauhaus Archive/Museum of Design) in Berlin is due to re-open this autumn. It hosts the world’s largest collection of material on the history and influence of the Bauhaus. Albert Einstein’s wooden summer-house in Caputh is another example of the Bauhaus style, while in Alfeld (near Hannover), the Fagus Factory is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an outstanding example of how the Bauhaus used cubic forms and constructed façades of metal and glass. More information on the Bauhaus centenary celebrations can be found on www.grandtourofmodernism.com and www.bauhaus100.com
“ A Grand Tour of Modernism is recommended; a tour of significant buildings showcasing one hundred years of modern architecture.” The bauhauschapel (T. Lux Feininger: clarinet, Waldemar Alder: Trumpet, Ernst Egeler: Drums, Clemens Röseler: Trombone, Friedhelm Strenger: Piano), Dessau 1930 Foto: unknown / © Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin
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Art News / USA / Malta
Highlights
Mar – May –‘19 USA
MALTA
Artworks from 1923 in Public Domain
. ZfinMalta – National Dance Company announces its 2nd National Tour
1 January 2019 saw the largest mass expiration of copyright in the US in 21 years, as all works published in the United States in 1923 entered the public domain. The large amount of works includes literature, music, film and paintings, sculptures and photography, including Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), Henri Matisse’s Odalisque With Raised Arms and Constantin Brancusi’s Bird in Space. The annual release of works into the public domain was stalled in 1998, when major entertainment corporations advocated for, and won, longer copyright protections, adding 20 years to the copyright term. This meant that the body of work due to be released in 1999, and all subsequent years was effectively delayed until 2019 and later. Now, happily, works by M. C. Escher, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Max Ernst, Man Ray and many more are in the public domain.
Following a successful world . premiere of Paolo Mangiola’s Voyager, ZfinMalta will now be taking its full-length creation to theatres around the Maltese islands. 41 years ago, American astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan thought of sending a time capsule into outer space that would give intelligent life a snapshot of Earth’s diversity, sounds, feelings and thoughts through 116 analog encoded images. Launched on the Voyager Spacecrafts in 1977, the Golden Records, were expected to remain intelligible for more than a billion years.
Pablo Picasso, The Pan Pipes (1923)
. Fascinated by Sagan’s work, ZfinMalta’s artistic director and choreographer Paolo Mangiola got wondering what NASA would send into outer space were it to repeat the same exercise today. How would we represent our past, our present, and our hopes for the future?
COMIC
BRUCE MICALLEF EYNAUD
He’s into Cubism
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A full Maltese team, including visual artist Austin Camilleri, composer Veronique Vella and designer Luke Azzopardi collaborated with Mangiola to create an experience that propels its audience into a world of introspection, self-discovery and reflection on the way human beings are treating this fragile pale blue dot. Show dates: St. Agatha Theatre – Rabat: 13 April Teatru Aurora – Gozo: 27 April Pjazza Teatru Rjal – Valletta: 3 May Tickets: www.zfinmalta.org/voyager
Opinion /Public Art / Malta Mar – May –‘19
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.
MALTA
LISA GWEN BALDACCHINO
FOR PUBLIC ART’S SAKE “Art is language and public art is public speech.” Jonathan Jones, The Guardian
W
alking into Spazju Kreattiv a few days ago, two hanging plates caught my attention. I immediately recognised the suspended crockery as a ‘comment piece’ by Victor Agius, created following the contentious removal of his temporary public artwork from Pjazza Teatru Rjal (PTR), a few years back. One plate carried an image of the artwork titled Kapitell - a stone and meshwire piece that was precariously plugged atop one of the remaining standing columns of PTR - a powerful and symbolic representation of the site’s history, while on the other, the following quote was reproduced: “It would be better if your experiments in contemporary public art, weren’t shown in public spaces, but in an appropriate museum, so that we don’t risk shocking or scaring people away from modern art” (translated from Maltese). The author of this comment was not named; however, the reasoning seems to have been given as justification for the removal of his piece; flawed though it may be, as well as defeatist of the very notion of what constitutes public art and the space(s) in which it should sit, inhabit or even the contexts with which it should interact. Isn’t that the sheer beauty of public art? It’s a ‘phenomenon’, whereby an artwork or monument, irrespective of size, shape or colour, is placed in a (generally) strategic hard-to-ignore space, demanding some form of public engagement – positive or negative. Contemporary public art seems to attract much of the latter, simply because of the visual language used by contemporary artists – a language which fiercely departs from the predominantly Neo-Baroque style we are collectively accustomed to being presented with. In fact, the figurative busts, the full-length figures, and commemorative statues, outweigh the abstracted, conceptual and contemporary artworks in our midst.
Which is why PTR’s public art programme, launched in 2014, was so praiseworthy: for the temporality of the artworks, the variety of subjects addressed through different media, the social comment, the high audience engagement factor, and the altered contextual dynamic which each piece provided to the space in which it sat. Agius’s Kapitell was the penultimate to be shown; shortly after this incident, PTR’s public art programme was scrapped. It remains one of the most successful efforts towards proper discourse and engagement with public art in Malta to date. Perhaps this was the original intention behind Valletta 2018’s Hekk Jghid ilMalti, which saw thirteen temporary artworks, representing Maltese proverbs installed around the capital city. On paper, this could have been a fabulous project, which addressed public art, as well as language and intangible heritage through visual means. Unfortunately, the poor design of the pieces, as well as the literal interpretations, and the choice of material (polystyrene), did not add to the project. The pieces were only removed from Valletta a couple of weeks ago, most having suffered terrible damage across the seasons. However, the media recently reported that the works are being distributed in different localities across the country, despite their poor condition. And this is the aspect which I struggle with most; the so-called inherent project legacy vis-à-vis the choice to commission works in such a weak material. The intention, the purpose of a project, is key. To quote Prof. Pavel Buchler (Manchester School of Art), “Public art can be static, moving, part of the infrastructure or a projection of light and sound. It can last for a minute, a day, a year or a lifetime.” It’s still not clear just what the intention of this project was. Yet there have been a number of successful efforts towards introducing permanent contemporary public artworks in Malta and Gozo. Perhaps the most successful programme to date remains
Kapitell, 2015, Victor Agius. Photo by Elisa Von Brockdorff
the scheme launched by the Gozo Ministry within the ecoGozo 2010-2012 Action Plan. As many as thirteen works of art were commissioned, with each project successfully carried to completion; each a distinct component within its respective environment. Similar programmes have been launched in Malta. In 2015, two Ministries, sup. ported by Arts Council Malta and MUZA (Heritage Malta), invited interested artists to submit proposals for Art in Public Spaces – the programme was meant to span three years, culminating and ending in 2018. To date, three of these have been realised, and work is underway on two others; Matthew Pandolfino’s Dgha. jsa tar-Rih for Dock No. 1, and Hagarna by Victor Agius, to be placed near . Ggantija in Gozo. Adrian Abela’s Misrah il-Kliem Mistur, to be placed in Ghar Lapsi, should be completed ‘later this year’. Yet, hope is the last to die, and possibly the next series of projects – the second phase of this programme was launched a few weeks back - will translate into remarkable artworks, which challenge public perception, as much as the spaces for which they are designed. Yet not all public art follows calls for proposals, or a competition. This seems to be the case with a figurative sculpture placed on the Kappara roundabout last November. After much digging, it transpired that the piece, Mother and Child, was made by Paul Vella Critien, the creator of the notorious Colonna Mediterranea – an abstracted, yet seem-
ingly phallic, ceramic sculpture. Vella Critien’s Mother and Child possesses similar proportions and height to his Luqa monument; its aesthetic and location are equally questionable. Although I stand to be corrected, I couldn’t trace a call for this particular monument, nor any media coverage justifying the choice of the artist or the public expense, and neither could Gzira Local Council shed any light on the matter, rather requesting the undersigned to provide them with information instead. Lastly, I cannot omit a comment on Castille Place: which has today become a fragmented ‘gathering’ of public sculptures and monuments – all within close proximity of each other. Three figurative monuments dedicated to ex-Prime Ministers Dom Mintoff and Gorg Borg Oliver, and philosopher Manwel Dimech, are fiercely juxtaposed with the Knot sculpture commemorating the Valletta Summit on Migration in 2016, and by the Eternal Flame commemorating the Maltese who fought for emancipation. It is a hotchpotch of unrelated monuments that each speak a different tongue; they stand in painful contrast, almost littering the square that once bore a luscious green roundabout, full of mature trees. The trees have disappeared, supposedly in the name of progress. And what the public has been left with a space which hardly caters to public need, nor is representative of public interest.
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Spotlight /Africa / Budapest
Highlights
Mar – May –‘19 AFRICA
Ibrahim Mahama installation in South Africa Ibrahim Mahama, known in Malta for his 2018 installation A Straight Line Through the Carcass of History, at the Pixkerija in Valletta has created a major installation in Cape Town, South Africa. Mahama is arguably Ghana’s most respected contemporary artist, exhibiting internationally, including at Documenta 14 in Athens in 2017, and at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. Labour of Many is a site-specific work created for the Norval Foundation’s largest gallery, and covers the surfaces of the huge space with Mahama’s signature hessian sacks. Mahama’s socially engaged and process-based practice uses the hessian sacks to narrate global economics, histories and trade. The sacks are integral to the cocoa trade in Ghana, and are used in all areas of life, from import, to the transportation of coal and even food. Labour of Many will be on show at Gallery 8, Norval Foundation until 11 August.
Ibrahim Mahama: Labour of Many, 2018, (detail). Photo by Dave Southwood and Courtesy of Norval Foundation.
PRESENTS
“A JOURNEY THROUGH DANCE & BEAUTY” CHOREOGRAPHY & DIRECTION PAOLO MANGIOLA VISUAL ARTIST AUSTIN CAMILLERI ORIGINAL SCORE VERONIQUE VELLA COSTUMES LUKE AZZOPARDI
NATIONAL DANCE COMPANY TOUR 2019 13 APRIL ST. AGATHA’S AUDITORIUM, RABAT 20.00HRS 27 APRIL TEATRU AURORA, VICTORIA, GOZO 20.00HRS 3 MAY PJAZZA TEATRU RJAL, VALLETTA 21.00HRS
TICKETS €15 BOOKINGS ZFINMALTA.ORG
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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 / Feminism / Malta Mar – May –‘19 CULTURE
JOANNA DELIA
The abominable ‘female’ artist and her issues
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a while. Women are not absent from key positions in institutions such as the Arts Council of Malta and most private art spaces in Malta are run by women.
Let’s face it: no woman wants to be called ‘female’ this and ‘female’ that. We want to be seen as what we are without any gender references and connotations. Obviously. We consider the simple mention of our gender before our profession to be insulting. But the figures beckon. Some statistics in themselves are insulting – and prevalent across the board.
. And yet, at the newly inaugurated MUZA in Valletta, of the hundreds of works on display, only seven are by women. Seven works out of a collection of thousands! I know that many more works by women are part of the national collection, . so why aren’t they on show? MUZA is a national-community art museum, boasting open, non-linear curation and a welcoming ethos, however its collection is a historical one, and it cannot rewrite art history overnight.
In Maltese politics, for instance, the proportion of female politicians is set at between eight and 10 percent and has not budged for the last 60 years and other sectors, such as my own – medicine – fare no better. According to a 2018 report by the Freelands Foundation, fewer than 30 per cent of artists represented by major commercial galleries in London are women, with only five percent of galleries representing an equal number of male and female artists. Tate Modern director Frances Morris curated landmark major retrospectives of women artists including Louise Bourgeois (in 2007), Yayoi Kusama (in 2012) and Agnes Martin (in 2015) before her present appointment. Does it take a woman to organise exhibitions of female artists’ work? Do most male curators still naively – or deliberately – ignore female artists as they have done since the cinquecento? Rome’s Palazzo Braschi and the Museo del Prado in Madrid recently held major solo shows of Artemesia Gentileschi and Flemish Baroque prodigy Clara Peeters respectively, whose work is selling with million-dollar price-tags: a few female drops in a sea of male artists.
“ For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” Virginia Woolf
Why are there so few works by female artists on display and in permanent collections? Why do female artists find fewer gallerists to represent them? Why are retrospectives of female artists so much less prevalent than those held for male artists? Does this discrimination begin at school? Chelsea College of Arts graduate Chiara Cassar thinks not. “I actually think that art school is a huge safety blanket and creates a ‘deer in the headlights’ type effect because you have so much time to focus on your art practice, that you forget about the future struggle you will be faced with when you leave art school.’
Lately, it seems that, in the art world, women’s voices are heard more loudly in the Middle East. Last December, The Art Newspaper claimed that the art ecosystem in the Gulf is dominated by women. Royal patrons, expatriates and home-grown professionals are leading cornerstone institutions and driving the art market in that part of the world. So, what is the situation in Malta? Female students studying art outnumber male students at the University of Malta and at MCAST, and have done for
Teresa Sciberras, a prolific artist who trained in Scotland and Italy before completing her MFA at the University of Malta, remembers: “When, in 2017, the artist line-up for the Malta Pavilion was announced, I couldn’t help but notice that from the local artists, I was the only woman. The other three women artists who participated in the exhibition were from the Maltese diaspora. The female co-curator, Bettina Hutschek, is German. Coincidence? Maybe, but definitely one that gives pause for thought. I’m 100 percent sure that this was not due to prejudice on the part of the curators, so then what was it? Why is there such a stark and obvious discrepancy?’
Latitude 36, Charlie Cauchi, installation view
Her contemporary, Maxine Attard, says: “But, as in all parts of the world, girls and women are put in second place to men and forcefully – or softly – groomed to fit into a female stereotype. In my education in Malta, I was never told I
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Opinion / Feminism / Malta Mar – May –‘19 CULTURE
on the back from the older, established generation of male artists; they engage in the competitive bravado of who’s the best new kid on the block”, says Teresa Sciberras. Roxman Gatt says: “I would be naive to think that gender disparity in the art world no longer exists. Women are still tragically under-represented in the art world and commercial gallery sector and the pay gap still persists in universities and other large institutions.” So, what do we do?
Not in use, Chiara Cassar, 2018
could not do something because of my gender. I always felt that I was seen as someone special because I was a woman and wanted to be a serious artist. I never experienced such comments or felt such perceptions during my studies in the UK.” And why do female art school graduates exhibit less in the first five years after graduating than their male counterparts? Are they as prolific? Or is it just a matter of their work not being included in exhibitions? London-based, Royal College of Arts graduate Roxman Gatt tells me: “In my view, all women are prolific; they have had to work way harder than men and continue to do the same work, but what they achieve is beyond exceptional. The weight that the work carries is very visible: you can see the struggle, the passion – the transparency. It took many strong women to help us pave the way to an easier place, but the battle is still on-going and SHE will still be thrown obstacles and belittled and silenced; however, SHE is born a hustler and will always be one.”
not reflected in my work at all. This is another issue that women artists have to face. Women tend to be asked if their work is autobiographical. Male artists are never asked such questions.”
First, we must identify the reasons for these statistical gaps. But, as Teresa Sciberras says: “I don’t yet know what exactly this gap is, much less how we can escape it. Can we build a bridge over it? Is it a gap that – in order not to fall into it – a woman must give up something of themselves: the possibility of love, perhaps, or a relationship, or having children? Maybe, in order to be an artist we
must shed something of these like ballast from a sinking air balloon, in order to emerge and join the establishment.” Will the gaps shrink if we shine more light on female artists: consciously, frankly and discriminatorily? Is there something wrong with intentionally balancing out gender presence and representation in the art world, especially when there are more artists graduating from the gender that is so grossly under-represented? Will unofficially designated quotas affect the respect these artists deserve in their own right, as quota-assignment has done in other areas? I suppose we should not be having this conversation. We certainly should not have to have this conversation - but we must!
Is the absence of work by female artists in shows and museums linked to collectors and their gender? In a Huff post article, Malcolm Harris comments: “Unlike their boisterous and boastful male counterparts, most female collectors are very discreet in their purchasing habits and rarely make public announcements about the works or artists they are collecting.” Perhaps it is the humility factor once again that is keeping women back. There’s also the factor of female artists simply being less known than their male counterparts. Although the Art+Feminism movement has seen more information about female artists than ever before uploaded onto the public domain, there is still a long way to go in this area.
But why do collectors buy less art from female artists? Is it because their art is ‘female’ or ‘girly’? Is it because it explores – or is perceived to explore – ‘female issues’ or issues with the ‘female identity’? Female art? The work of the late Isabelle Borg, for example – a pioneer and heroine of the modernist movement in Malta – certainly does not subscribe to the description ‘female art’.
“Give me your opinion”, I said to several artists. “I want to get the gist of how you feel.” How many more centuries of unfair bias in the art world do we have to endure before we start questioning the relevance of this bias? “I don’t feel anything about it that makes real sense”, some said. “I shouldn’t have to have an opinion and, anyway, my opinion doesn’t matter much because there is no rational reason and no explanation for these statistics” they said. And I agree. Sexism is irrational by definition.
On the other hand, artist and film-maker Charlie Cauchi says: ‘My work is all me... so I suppose I do approach things from a female standpoint. I do deal with very personal material.” But Maxine Attard believes that: ‘No, my gender is
“The thing that niggles most here, however, is that over the last few years – with a few notable exceptions – those who seem to make it out of that sticky, endless ‘emerging’ tunnel seem to be the boys. They are greeted with slaps
Circumscribed 1, Teresa Sciberras, 2015
Pain[ting], Roxman Gatt, 2018
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Review / Exhibition / Vienna Mar – May –‘19
KARIN GRECH is an Austrian-born teacher of English and a part-time sculptor with a passion for art and art history. She lives in Gozo and travels regularly to art shows and exhibitions around Europe.
VIENNA
KAREN GRECH
City of Women The work of 56 female artists sees the light of day
I
f it were just a question of surnames, I am sure that Klien and Steiner would be up there with Klimt and Schiele as names we associate with Viennese Modernism. It is when you look at their first names that you realise why they aren’t; Klien and Steiner were women. They were well known in their time, exhibited with their male colleagues and contributed significantly to the achievements of Viennese Modernism. Yet, they were largely ignored later on, once art history was given importance again at the end of the Second World War.
Follow Karin Grech on her blog about art and exhibitions called Bee Wise www.bwiseaftertheevent.wixsite. com/aftertheevent/blog and facebook/bwiseaftertheevent
There are several reasons why these women do not appear in the annals of art history. Many of them were Jewish and with the Anschluss of 1938 they, and their art vanished from public view. Most of them migrated, several were deported and sadly, some, like Friedl Dicker Brandeis and Helene von Taussig, died in concentration camps. Their hard-won presence on the art scene faded, and eventually they completely disappeared from public consciousness. Once the war was over, art historians found it simpler to concentrate on the male names of Vienna’s Modernism, wiping out the artistic emancipation of these women. It is remarkable that in a large-scale art show (presided over by Gustav Klimt) in 1908, over 30 percent of a total of 179 artists were women; whereas in 1986, Kirk Varndoe, the then curator of MoMA in New York, went so far as to exclude all female artists in the show Vienna 1900: Art, Architecture and Design. His viewpoint was that modern art ‘began largely as an endeavour of white European males’ and to put it bluntly, he found that no female artist’s work was worthy to be hung on the walls of his museum. When I went to see this exhibition, spread through the splendid rooms of the Lower Belvedere Museum in Vienna, I was lucky enough to catch part of a guided tour with the exhibition’s curator Sabine Fellner. It is due to her passion and meticulous efforts that this showcase of 56 female artists saw the light of day; she tells stories of having to search the archives of the museum and track works through gallerists and descendants of the artists. She finally put together this show that spans a period of close to 40 years and several movements, from Atmospheric Impressionism and Secessionism to Expressionism, Kinetism, and New Objectivity. Fellner spoke of how one iconic painting by Broncia Koller-Pinell called Early Market that was thought to have been lost, was found hanging unnoticed in a provincial school in Lower Austria. Now, this very Broncia Koller-Pinell had gained international recognition in the exhibition of 1908, when an art critic of the time said of her that ‘…there is a true energy, not imitative of the male, in this artist’s brushstroke and framing of forms’. She was a respected member of Austria’s artistic elite in her time, forming part of the circle around Klimt. And yet, ironically enough, as recently as 1980, Austrian media branded her a ‘painting housewife’ on the occasion of a major retrospective of her work. There is nothing housewife-like about these works of art. The artists display idiosyncratic styles and impress with their versatility. Alongside paintings and sculptures the exhibition comprises delicate watercolours, detailed ink and pencil drawings, multi-coloured woodcuts as well as exquisite etchings and lithographs. Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Adolescentia, 1903 © Belvedere, Vienna
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No.6__ artpaper / 17
Review / Exhibition / Vienna
Highlights
Mar – May –‘19 VIENNA
to national collections taking an interest and acquiring the works of these artists.
There are also a few bold and expressive enamel paintings and two examples of faience maquettes. The latter, two ceramic bas-reliefs by Elena Luksch-Makowsky, were the models for a dynamic architectural relief that graced the facade of the Bürgertheater in Vienna until the building was demolished in 1960. Another documented commission is the work of Eugenie Breithut-Munk, who painted allegorical murals at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna that to this day adorn the walls of the building. Breithut-Munk was a member of the very active group Eight Women Artists that served as a platform for female artists at the time. The group held successful exhibitions in one of finde-siècle Vienna’s most important galleries. This led
Another one of the founding ‘eight’ artists was the Russian born Jewish sculptor and painter Teresa Feodorowna-Ries, who was working in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century. In fact, it is her remarkable sculpture titled Witch doing her Toilette on Walpurgis Night that greets the visitor on entering the exhibition space. Unsurprisingly, this white marble sculpture, which shows a nude woman cutting her toe nails, caused a scandal when it was first exhibited in 1896. Yet despite - or possibly because of - her provocative work, Feodorowna-Ries became a successful artist. Tina Blau, a landscapist, was another success story. She was a co-founder and teacher at Vienna’s first art academy for women and contributed considerably to the development of a style of Austrian landscape painting called ‘Atmospheric Impressionism”. Curiously, one of her key works, Spring in the Prater, was initially rejected by the organisers of an international event at the Vienna Künstlerhaus in 1882 for ‘excessive brightness’; yet, it was later included and eventually acquired by the Imperial Picture Gallery. Stephanie Hollenstein served in the First World War disguised as a male soldier, and once exposed, served
as a military painter for the Austro-Hungarian War Office. The exhibition contains her rather striking, yet confusingly-titled Portrait of a (male) Soldier Self-portrait amongst other expressive and emotive works. Many other works also clearly show the influences of the era and its history. One particularly poignant example is the haunting painting titled Interrogation II by Bauhaus-educated Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. She left us a legacy not only in her oeuvre but also in the art education she gave to Jewish children while teaching them during their (and her) imprisonment in the ‘model ghetto’ Terezin. The biographies of these artists do tell us about their achievements, where they exhibited, which associations they founded or belonged to and where they taught. But they often also contain references to who their fathers, brothers or husbands were. While that might be of interest from a purely biographical point of view, I will welcome the day when a woman artist will be defined purely by her work. City of Women: Female Artists in Vienna from 1900 to 1938 is on show at The Lower Belvedere in Vienna until 19 May.
ARCHITECTURE
St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral
Rebrand and evolution for Valletta architectural practice
Late last year, the architecture and design practice Architecture Project was formally renamed ‘AP Valletta’.
the city of Valletta and has continued to have considerable influence on contemporary architecture in Malta.
Since its founding in 1991, the practice has always been strongly linked with
AP Valletta has renewed and developed much of the city’s architecture through
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a series of projects, including the Barrakka Lift, the regeneration of City Gate and the new Parliament building – in collaboration with Renzo Piano Building Workshop, as well as the ongoing new museum at St John’s Co-Cathedral and the restoration of St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral. Research projects include Novelletta, presented at the London Festival of Architecture and at La Galerie d’Architecture in Paris. Continually evolving, AP Valletta is now creating ‘four sappers’ – a creative cluster bringing architecture and design, food and digital fabrication together, and new projects in the fields of proptech and education are also in the pipeline. The concept is therefore to enable creative enterprises to become drivers of urban regeneration and innovation in the context of Valletta as a creative city. Currently, AP Valletta, fablabvalletta and the Mediterranean Culinary Academy form part of this growing community. www.apvalletta.eu
3D printed AP’s prototype of Instant Domestic Enclosure. Credit AP Valletta
Ro-Botanicals machine at fablabvalletta, Science in the City, Valletta, 2018
Spotlight / Jeff Koons / Ashmolean Mar – May –‘19 LONDON
Jeff Koons at the Ashmolean A major exhibition of the work of Jeff Koons is on show at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The show features 17 works, spanning the artist’s career, including his early work One Ball Equilibrium Tank, and the later Balloon Venus, as well as his more recent re-working of classical statues and Old Master paintings such as Gazing Ball (Belvedere Torso). Koons is best known for his over-sized replicas of ceramic figurines and balloon figures, often created in highly-polished ceramic and stainless steel, and is currently one of the world’s richest artists. The Ashmolean is the world’s oldest public museum and houses exhibits from Minoan art to Egyptian pre-Dynastic sculpture and Raphael drawings; creating an intense juxtaposition with Koons’ brash and glossy work. Jeff Koons at the Ashmolean is on show until 9 June. www.ashmolean.org
Jeff Koons, Seated Ballerina (detail) © Jeff Koons, Artist’s proof Edition of 3 2010–2015
Jeff Koons, Balloon Venus (Magenta) © Jeff Koons, 5 unique versions (Magenta, Red, Violet, Yellow, Orange) 2008–2012
No.6__ artpaper / 19
Opinion / Politics / Portraiture Mar – May –‘19 ART
KONRAD BUHAGIAR
The Politics of Art
Silvio, 2018, Seb Tanti Burlò
L
ast week, in London, I visited the National Gallery to see a fascinating exhibition of portraits by Lorenzo Lotto, one of the greatest portraitists of the Italian Renaissance. He depicted men and women sitting alone or in compositions of two or three, and equipped his paintings with a rich symbolism that imbues them with a compelling psychological depth. Lotto’s sitters, among them clerics, merchants and humanists, are often surrounded by objects which, together with the attire and jewellery of his sitters, hint at the status, interests and aspirations of his subjects, adding social and political meaning to each work. At the centre of his rather melancholic social commentary is the Portrait of Andrea Odoni: a rich merchant and collector of paintings, sculpture and antique vases, as well as curiosities such as petrified serpents and rare shells. He wears a rich and dark
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mantle, trimmed with a luxurious fur collar, and has a gold chain around his neck. In one hand he holds a crucifix, and in the other a sculpture of the Ephesian Diana. In my lectures on fragments and the cult of ruins, I have often used this portrait as a prelude and introduction to the Modernist invention of abstraction. Michelangelo was at the centre of this milestone in western art history, symbolised by the myth of the Torso of the Belvedere. He is undeniably the artist who best expressed the marriage of Neo-platonic thought and Christian doctrine that is represented in this painting. But with Lotto – for whom Odoni is the personification of the cultured milieu of merchants and bankers who spearheaded the spread of Humanism – modern psychology was born. From Lotto onwards, all the way to Expressionism, to Meidner’s Ich und die Stadt and beyond, the portrait became more than a mere record of a likeness. It is
a document that charts the subconscious. The relationship between man and his physical, social and political environment is embedded in it. The portraitist is not only a poet imitating and recomposing Nature, but has also taken on the role of political and social commentator. Shelley wrote that “the most unfailing herald, companion and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry.” I remember reading Marilyn Butler’s Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries about English Literature around the time of the French Revolution. It blew me away with its intricate description of the relationships between English writers, critics, editors and journalists who were “peculiarly political”. Who would have thought that the sublime descriptions of the elements and the moody landscapes in Shelley’s beautiful verse were more than a metaphor for the individual soul and concealed a precise politi-
Opinion / Politics / Portraiture Mar – May –‘19
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.
ART
cal message aimed at the renewal of a staid society? No poet of the Romantic period, even the most apparently apolitical like Keats, spared any political effort. The Romantics’ favourite theme of the bloom of individual consciousness in the face of a destructive natural cosmos was none other than a Liberal clarion call for the masses. Young writers such as Hunt, Keats, Shelley, Scott and Peacock consolidated the role of the poet in society as a chronicler and revolutionary, a tradition that extends all the way, in recent times, to Lennon, Cohen and Dylan. Art and politics may seem like strange bedfellows, but nowhere do the two embrace more intimately than in the cartoon, a genre that blossomed as the winds of change swept across Europe following the French Revolution. In the middle of the 19th century, Punch magazine inaugurated a new period where satire, caricature and humour, contained in images describing the political climate of the moment, insinuated their way into our lives and became a daily presence, influential and powerful enough to put in motion an engagement as tragic as the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
The art of Sebastian Tanti Burlò has its seed in this tradition. His work in local newspapers is an expressive and satirical take on both the underhand – and very public – goings-on of a tiny post-colonial, post-modern population that has clumsily been trading its authentic catholic-community values for a deterministic, commercial drive for material wealth. Its spiritual savings have been withdrawn from the nation’s coffers, Sebastian seems to say, to be converted into a new currency consisting of the numbers of bedrooms and square metres of total ugliness. His new body of work consists of a series of large canvases, portraits which, true to the axiom that architecture is the mirror of the soul of a nation, represent the human equivalent of the current urban landscape. Here is a group of stereotypical members of the community that he depicts, critically but affectionately; Sausage People he calls them, gathered around the table, like a ship of fools, to console themselves about the loss of looks and love, of friends and taste and dreams and all the beautiful things of life.
They are divining new ways of raising that all-important, high-as-can-be number in the bank which, they erroneously believe, can make up for all that unhappiness and loss. It can buy a pair of Fendi sunglasses and a Ralph Lauren polo shirt and silk Yves Saint Laurent ties, brands that crowd their portraits like the objects that populate Lotto’s canvases. Unlike Lotto’s humanistic melancholy, though, the bright colours and rich attire here conceal a deep-rooted sadness. It is a kind of Vanitas because if loss and pain are an inevitable part of life, the artist seems to be telling us, we need to find more lasting and sustainable forms of redemption. Portrait of Andrea Odoni by Lorenzo Lotto is in the Royal Collection of the United Kingdom and was exhibited at the National Gallery in London earlier this year. The Last Dinner by Seb Tanti Burlò, will be on show at Risette, 81 Old Theatre Street, Valletta, until 30 April.
“ Art and politics may seem like strange bedfellows but nowhere do the two embrace more intimately than in the cartoon. ” The Physician Giovanni Agostino della Torre and his Son, Niccolò, about 1515-16, Oil on canvas, 85x68.2cm, Bought, 1862. © Photo: The National Gallery, London.
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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 nationalcommunity art museum.
Opinion / Museum / Paris
Highlights
Mar – May –‘19 PARIS
SANDRO DEBONO
In Conquest of Culture Setting sail with Frank Gehry’s Louis Vuitton Foundation
M
ost of my travels are motivated by a search for the latest exhibition project to discover and explore, and my latest journey to Paris was no exception. The major retrospective dedicated to Jean Michel Basquiat, the highly influential artist who died at the tender age of 27, brought together well over 100 of his works, some of which have never before been exhibited in public. This time though, more than the exhibition itself, the venue of the Fondation Louis Vuitton proved to be a revelation to me. This is definitely not just another white cube exhibition space. It is a living structure, afloat and in motion, while standing solemnly and firmly in its setting. Entering the building feels very much like boarding a vessel, setting sail into the future. Designed by American architect Frank Gehry, the Fondation Louis Vuitton is testimony to the achievements of modern design and technology. Gehry’s building - made of glass and fibre-reinforced concrete known as ductal floats on a bed of shallow water with a stepped cascade in front. True to Gehry’s intention of creating for Paris ‘a magnificent vessel symbolising the cultural calling of France’, the structure is decked with curved glass roofing made out of over 3,600 purposely produced panels curved to the nearest millimetre to mimic wind-filled sails. The building
real time. The teams also made use of software originally developed for the aviation industry to construct the museum.
is invested with a sense of latent movement, seemingly light and afloat in spite of its overwhelming scale, particularly when seen from the approaches to the Bois de Boulogne on the western edge of Paris. This is Gehry’s aesthetic, with an architectural language of folding, undulating mass and form akin to the Guggenheim in Bilbao and the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle. Glass - held in place by a majestic cobweb of metal and bespoke ply wood beams - is the glory of Gehry’s design. In conceiving the museum building, Gehry undoubtedly sought inspiration from its surrounding cultural landscape. The spaceship-like structure connects and blends with the surround-
ings of the Jardin d’Acclimatation in which it finds itself. Planning restrictions did hold some sway over the project; the structure had to be built within the square footage and the two-storey volume of a bowling alley, and anything higher was to be made of glass. Gehry’s building seemingly sheds these restrictions and succeeds in making a bold statement beyond any perceived restriction in height and footprint. With its unique structure and daring design, the project registered thirty patents in total, covering construction methodology, materials and techniques. Multidisciplinary teams worked on a 3D digital model in order to solve technical issues concurrently and in
The structure is conceived in contrasting forms; monumentality on one hand and more intimate passageways between zones on the other. The interiors unfold to reveal bridged spaces, staircases and passageways with views of the levels beneath. Internal structures are kept bare and true to their function. The bowels of this intricate structure are connected to a centrally-located main foyer from which visitors can access the exhibition halls set on a number of floors. The interior is lit by the diffused light seeping in through the dominant sails and strategically located shafts which soften the relationship between interior and exterior. Monumentality is key and the interconnecting exhibition spaces are conceived to host multiple projects concurrently. Not one hall is the same size. Some have extremely high ceilings akin to temples or sacred spaces. Others have the look and feel of a traditional art gallery. The space is minimalist at best and does not distract from the focus and centrality of the work displayed within. In fifty years, this iconic building will be given to the civic authorities of the city. Come what may, the beauty of this monumental structure will be a sight to behold for years to come.
2 0 1 , M E R C H A N T S T R E E T, VA L L E T TA
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Interview / Exhibition / Malta Mar – May –‘19 PAINTING
M A R G E R I TA P U L È
A Playful Paradox A unique blend of pop sensibility and painterly realism
Oil on Floppy disks, 2019, SJ Fuerst
A
woman sits on an oversized director’s chair, surrounded by an inflatable tiger and a herd of blow-up pigs. She looks straight at us; her look is challenging, commanding even. Another, wearing a swimsuit that gives her the torso (and testicles) of Michelangelo’s David looks straight ahead, barely tolerating the cardboard biblical figures that surround her. There is nothing coquettish here. Their more demure sisters are engaged in perhaps more modest tasks: one herds an inflatable sheep, another takes a blow-up Godzilla for a walk, yet another is caught guiltily taking a bite out of an inflatable doughnut. This is the world of SJ Fuerst: a world where mass-produced becomes beautiful, artificial becomes natural,
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toys become symbols and women – above all – are in control. SJ Fuerst lives and works in Gozo, combining her contemporary and classical art training to create these magical, paradoxical worlds: hyper-real from a distance but soft and delicate up close. She studied in New York, Florence and London and has now chosen the Gozitan light and island peace as a base from where to work and create these magically real paintings. Fuerst builds these worlds – sometimes taking a few years to do so – by assembling inflatable animals, coloured backdrops, costumes and models to create a self-sufficient universe. The world is built around the female figure – she is queen of her kingdom: the inflatables, the costumes and the props all exist within her orbit.
And what seems on the surface to be a decorative or fanciful image, on closer inspection proves to contain many contradictions. Firstly, Fuerst’s women are sexy, sometimes underdressed, but they are never anonymous and are definitely not passive. Art-lovers will be familiar with the claim of the male gaze, creating a world to be seen through male eyes only. Fuerst’s women negate this; they are sexy, yes, but they do not exist for men – they are looking right back at us. Another paradox in Fuerst’s work is the juxtaposition of elements of the natural world and the almost trashily fake objects that mimic it. Sateen jellyfish, synthetic bunnies and latex mermaids claim their place in front of equally fake painted backdrops of heavenly skies or idyllic bowers. Fuerst herself is not straightforward. Of course, she is sparkly, young and gushingly positive, with an infec-
S
Interview / Exhibition / Malta Mar – May –‘19
MARGERITA PULÈ is an artist and writer with a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts. Her practice and research are concerned with the contradictions of politics and social realities.
tious enthusiasm. But her smiles hide a serious side in her character and a determination to paint, to work and to create her worlds exactly as she imagines them. In describing her work process – choosing the model, selecting the props, printing the backdrop, even stretching and preparing the canvas – she reveals her artist’s mind that is utterly focused on the task in hand. She laughs as she describes her inflatable animal collection, and gushes over some of the costumes she has accumulated. But she is deadly serious about creating her work; her worlds are hers alone and they need her to come into existence. The images that Fuerst presents to us are contradictory in their beauty. Little Oil Spill Mermaid depicts a figure leaning back gracefully, with a mermaid’s suit and tail. There’s something ominous in the title and in the fact that her face and figure is completely covered in an almost bondage-like costume that contrasts with the light-hearted evocation of the mermaid in the work’s title. Of the costume, Fuerst tells us that she found it ‘unbelievably beautiful, but also unbelievably eerie’ – these oxymorons, it seems, attract her. Daphne After Apollo also contains a paradox. Daphne is dressed in what is – to be honest – a pretty humiliating costume. She is wearing an oversized car air-freshener that just about preserves her modesty, representing her transformation into a tree, following Apollo’s advances. The work refers to a classical myth and is set in a bucolic scene, but this natural world is made, quite clearly, of a printed backdrop and the air-freshener fir tree is so realistic you can almost smell its ubiquitous sickly perfume. The allusion to the me-too movement is obvious here, but it’s not a straightforward reference; if anything, it’s a tongue-in-cheek and playful reaction to a tale of female harassment. There is, of course, an element of SJ Fuerst herself in her work: young and optimistic with a great sense of humour, but definitely nobody’s fool. I imagine she enjoyed assembling Maul; a Darth-masked woman in black stilettoes brandishing a >>
Godzilla, SJ Fuerst
“What seems on the surface to be a decorative or fanciful image, on closer inspection proves to contain many contradictions.” >> No.6__ artpaper / 25
Interview / Exhibition / Malta Mar – May –‘19 PAINTING
“Her smiles hide a serious side in her character and a determination to paint, to work, and to create her worlds exactly as she imagines them.” >> repurposed light-sabre. Or Jellyfish, which shows a
girl wearing a beautiful incandescent jellyfish headpiece – made by Fuerst herself – standing in an underwater scene. But the image about which she talks with the most glee, and which seems to be her current favourite, is The David: that painting with the biblical figures and the marble testicles. Three men, looking for all the world as if they have wandered out of a Maltese festa, surround the painting’s heroine. On either side of her, St Peter and St James look downwards dubiously while, behind them, Noah has his hands raised above his head in horror. Yet it is the woman at the centre of the painting – that woman wearing a silly swimsuit and heels – that comes out as the winner here. She is serene and confident, the sky behind her gives her a halo-like glow and she looks straight at us, without giving a thought to the men surrounding her. This, I think, is SJ Fuerst: carefree but deadly serious, schooled in the classics but referencing pop, painting sexy women and in full possession of her own feminine strength and talent. Forest Fresh: An exhibition of paintings on canvas and floppy disks by SJ Fuerst opens on 22 March at 7.30pm and runs until 20 April at Lily Agius Gallery, 54 Cathedral Street, Sliema, Malta. For more information email info@lilyagiusgallery.com and see www.lilyagiusgallery.com.
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Circe from Homer’s Odyssey, SJ Fuerst
Magic Rabbit, SJ Fuerst
RICHARD ENGLAND is an architect, poet, artist and the author of several books on art and architecture. His buildings have earned him numerous International prizes and awards.
Opinion / Architecture + Poetry Mar – May –‘19
RICHARD ENGLAND
Architecture & Poetry “Buildings should be just like poems. The impression a building makes on our senses should arouse feelings” Étienne-Louis Boullée Etymology In attempting to establish a relationship between architecture and poetry, it seems appropriate to first of all investigate the origins and meanings of the two respective disciplines: architecture from the Greek arkhitekton, arkhi (master) and tekton (building) and poetry from the Greek poieses (to make). From the etymology of the words it is clear that the two disciplines are involved in a process of making and building, ie creating. However, the materials and methodologies employed are different: building materials for architecture and words for poetry. Yet, both share the aim of enchanting and elevating the human spirit. Architecture and poetry also share the qualities of precision, metrics, structure and rhythm as essential constituents in both their creative process and manifestation. Also common to both is the play of contrasting opposites: solid and void in architecture, sound and silence in poetry. Poetry Poetry, not unlike architecture, is also about building: building with words and sculpting with sound. It is about the taste of words and the intermittent voids and silences of the pauses, a crossover between sound and silence. One reads not only what is written, but also that which is not written: the words between the lines and the invisible words too; the heard and the unheard, the said and the unsaid. It is how musical and meaningful the poet can make these passages that elevates his or her work from the realm of prose to that of poetry, in the same way that an architect can make a building lift the spirit and enchant its users. The true poet casts a web of magic that has the capacity to carry the reader away, just as the true architect caps into his building human emotions in order to lift up the hearts of its users. Architecture The earliest definition of architecture, ‘Firmitas, Utilitas et Venustas’ by the Roman architect Vitruvius, clearly indicates the quality necessary to elevate construction to the realm of architecture. The first two qualities imply a correct building construction methodology and the manifestation of the materialistic functions of the building. The quality of ‘Venustas’ ( beauty), is that which moves our heart and raises the building from construction to architecture. Architecture must therefore extend structural stability and materialistic function to transcend its physical dimensions and measurable limits and ignite a spark in the heart of its users. Maladies of contemporary architecture It is the loss of enchantment and poetry in much of today’s architecture that has caused the public to fall out of love with architects, architecture and the built environment. In today’s turbulent world, devoid of the
spiritual, where we know the price of everything and the value of nothing and all is measured in monetary terms, architecture has become a commercial, self-indulgent, stylistic brand focused solely on novelty, appearance and monetary profit. Architects today must still remember that the ultimate scope of architecture is to serve people, accommodate their needs and elevate their spirit. Remedies and redemption Architecture today needs redemption in order to once again nourish human existence. There are architects, however, who in both their works and writings, still strive for enchantment and poetry. Emilio Ambasz
“Architects today must still remember that the ultimate scope of architecture is to serve people, accommodate their needs and elevate their spirit.” reminds us that “architecture is giving poetry to the pragmatic”, as does Tao Ho, who emphasises that “architecture must still elevate our spirit”. Luis Barragan, perhaps the 20th century’s most poetic architect, always strove for “beauty and emotion” in his work. This quest for enchantment in architecture is a parallel quest in poetry evident in the writings of many a poet. William Wordsworth tells us that poetry is about the “overflow of powerful feeling”, as does also the 20th century poet Robert Frost “poetry must reach the eye, the ear and most importantly, the heart.” Permanence vs transience Architecture and poetry differ radically in the extent of their longevity and permanence. Architecture much thought of as being finite and built to last, is in fact the most temporary and transient of all the arts. Once the architect hands over the building to the client, ownership is lost and the building undergoes additions, changes or even possible demolition if monetary profit looms on the horizon. On the other hand, poetry remains permanent and unchanged as Shakespeare emphasised: “not marble, nor the gilded monuments… will outlive this powerful rhyme”. As in the other arts
of painting, sculpture and literature, poetry forever retains its author’s authenticity – untouched and untainted. Architecture and poetry – the human response Architecture as outlined in Juhani Pallasmaa’s publication The Eyes of the Skin is engaged by all the human senses, while poetry is experienced visually and aurally. As an architect who writes poetry, I am particularly interested in the way words occupy the space on the page in a form of visual geometry; perhaps due to an early penchant for Concrete Poetry. Poetry is about the phenomenology of the experiences transmitted by the poet through the precise structure and rhythm of the poem and the poet’s expressive imagination. Architecture is also more about phenomenology: how space is experienced and how a building can transcend its physical dimensions and measurable limits to the immeasurable. Both require craftsmanship and skill in the making and both are disciplines concerned with the manifestation of an imagined idea into reality. The essence of both architecture and poetry is not so much about what the building or the poem is about, but what emotional effect the edifice or poem can have on users and readers. Reciprocal inspiration Both poetry and architecture, as stated before, rely on precision: the former in harmony with number, the latter in harmony with measure. Metrics and measure are common to both. It was Thomas Hardy who said “poetry is emotion put into measure”. Poetry and architecture can also serve as reciprocal inspirational sources. Great poetry has been inspired by architecture, as for example, in the works of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Hardy and Eliot, and architects have also used poetry as a source for their inspiration. Conclusion While the relationship between architecture and poetry remains nebulous, it is obvious that the two disciplines share many parallels, including that of the ultimate aim of evoking emotional meaning through lyricism. Both can exalt us, make our hearts leap and touch our soul. The ultimate aim of architecture remains perhaps best expressed in the words of master architect Alvar Aalto: “every product of architecture should be a fruit of our endeavour to build an earthly paradise”. In relation to poetry, Richard Garnett’s 1897 statement that the poet’s objective is “to create a perpetual feeling of enchantment” is equally significant. The words of architect-poet John Hejduk who, when Dean of the Cooper Union College in New York, introduced poetics and poetry as part of the architectural course curriculum: “architecture and poetry, in the end …are life-giving” provide an apt conclusion.
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MALETH/HAVEN/PORT Heterotopias of Evocation Malta Pavilion Biennale Arte 2019
CAVE OF DARKNESS - PORT OF NO RETURN, by Trevor Borg proposes a re-imagined multilayered narrative of ancient creatures and long lost civilizations, exploring entrapment concealed within a Haven.Â
Loosely drawing from animal remains and artefacts excavated in a cave in Malta the work seeks to make (up) histories, to fabricate facts and to blur the boundaries between actuality and imagination, real and semblance.
Artist: Trevor Borg Title of work: Cave of Darkness - Port of No Return Medium: Multi-media installation Year: 2018/2019 Photographs courtesy of the artist Copyright: Trevor Borg
Art News / Residencies / Gozo Mar – May –‘19 EXHIBITION
PHOTOGRAPHY
Nadine Baldow At Gozo Contemporary
Photographing the Gozitan Winter Landscape
German artist Nadine Baldow has recently spent four weeks at Meta Foundation’s Gozo residency; while there, she worked on a series of large-scale and highly coloured organic forms made from polyurethane, entitled Pristine Paradise. Baldow’s work examines our relationship with nature and the environment, asking if we are indeed part of nature ourselves, or if the planet’s natural state is what we have made of it. Of this relationship, she says “on the one hand, we perceive nature rather romantically, as a paradise-like place of longing, while on the other hand, we keep pushing it
even further back as a consequence of our current form of civilisation”. Pristine Paradise will be on show at Valletta Contemporary until 5 April. During this time, Baldow will collaborate with Austrian curator Maren Richter in a discussion around the themes addressed by her practice, to take place on 28 March.
F
rench photographer Cyril Sancereau has spent February photographing the Gozitan landscape, during a residency that lead to his latest exhibition at Lazuli Art Gallery. Sancereau, who trained as an architect, specialises in architecture and landscape photography; through his work he allows the specificities of place to be erased in order to create images without time, geography or social construction. He says of Gozo that the island awakens in him both a feeling of calm and serenity but also a feeling of an inquiétante étrangeté; an unsettling strangeness. Sancereau spent his residency walking and photographing, attempting to capture the island landscape’s ‘perpetual movement’. For him, the act of random wandering serves to amplify his experience of the island, allowing for a close documentation of the intimate transformation of the surrounding landscape. GWL Gozo Winter Landscape will be on show at Lazuli Art Gallery, Gozo until 7 April.
Valuable Paintings stolen from Valletta Convent It appears that paintings valued at thousands of euro have recently been stolen from the Convent of the Augustine Priests in Valletta, however their theft was not immediately detected because similar (fake) paintings were hung in their place to hide their disappearance. Work currently being carried out in parts of the building has made it difficult to ascertain how the theft was carried out, however it appears that the thieves were allowed to work without interruption, and were familiar with the building. The fact that it is not clear exactly when the paintings were stolen has further hampered the investigation. A Magisterial inquiry has been opened on this case. tvm.com.mt
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MALETH/HAVEN/PORT Heterotopias of Evocation Malta Pavilion Biennale Arte 2019
OUTLAND is a video, audio and water installation that focuses on the indecisiveness of man as he longs to re-trace his way to the ultimate Haven, caught between an island’s safety and the peril of returning to his homeland. Drawing from the story
Artist: Vince Briffa Title of work: Outland Medium: Video, audio, installation, water Year: 2019
of Calypso, it traces the symbolic duality of the lover, as saviour/oppressor, exploring the uncertainty and lure of safety, and the longing for freedom.
Director: Vince Briffa Actors: Paul Portelli, Sandra Mifsud Still Photography : Jon Wrigley Copyright: Vince Briffa
Spotlight / Events / Malta Mar – May –‘19 VISUAL ART EXHIBITIONS
A selection of curated events in Malta
04 – 06. 19 Events until June
Image: Gabriel Buttigieg
Until 25 April
04.04. 19
Until 19 April
05. 04. 1 9
0 6 .0 4 .1 9
2 6 .0 4 .1 9 Until 26 May
Until 31 May
Until 16 June
ARJA
SMUDGE
L AY ER S
Artists Gabriel Buttigieg, Ryan Falzon, Charles Balzan and Sarah Chircop will exhibit together for the first time in this collaborative exhibition. The show will present works in mixed media from photography to drawings and prints, exploring elements of vulnerability, intimacy, ephemerality and an underlying sense of being exposed. Between the indistinctness of the raw and subtle nature of the artworks, one is confronted with the ‘smudge’ with which each artist resonates.
An exhibition of work by Gozo-based Italian artist Emmanuele Li Pira. Li Pira began learning the art of etching and, more specifically, the method of etching with colours in his teenage years. He prefers to experiment with the Aquatint technique as this allows him to create different tones on the plate. At the same time, he has to be careful, as the slightest variations will materially change the overall effect.
JULINU’S RADIOA C T I V E R AV I O L I
A F R E S H B R E AT H
An exhibition of paintings by Finnish-Maltese artist Arja Nukarinen-Callus, curated by Tonio Mallia, in which the artist tries to discover her bearings as a Finn who lived for some time in Italy and has been living in Malta for over 23 years. The paintings are inspired by physical locations: in fact, she calls them ‘landscapes’, however, they go beyond ‘incidental’ settings and seek to portray a soulscape in which the inner core of our existence is communicated through shapes and colours.
O B J E C T, O B J E T C , OBJECC
Where: Art Galleries, Palazzo de La Salle, Valletta Mondays to Fridays: 8am to 7pm Saturdays: 9am to 1:30pm www.artsmalta.org/events
Where: Studio 87, Liesse Hill, Valletta Mondays to Fridays: 10am to 6pm Saturdays: 10am to 1pm
Until 3 May
Where: art..e Gallery, Victoria, Gozo Daily (including Sundays) 9.30am to 12.15pm
Award-winning artist Julinu (Julian Mallia), known for his meticulously-executed visual ideas, presents his first solo exhibition. A playfully witty and thoughtprovoking collection of 17 realistically-executed oil paintings, the exhibition combines traditional art techniques with Julinu’s characteristically contemporary outlook on familiar notions, presenting a strangely familiar alternative universe. Where: Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta Mondays: 9am to 5pm Tuesdays to Fridays: 9am to 9pm Saturdays & Sundays: 10am to 9pm www.kreattivita.org
04.05.19
In this exhibition of work by Anton Calleja, one of the most versatile contemporary artists and painters in the Maltese Islands, he expresses his emotions, thoughts and inner feelings. This is a continuation of Calleja’s artistic journey: always seeking and experimenting with techniques and new materials. His work has been exhibited internationally and is to be found gracing many public and private collections. Where: art..e Gallery, Victoria, Gozo Daily, inc. Sundays: 9.30am to 12.15pm
04.05.19
An exhibition by international artists Liza Eurich (CA), Katri Kempas (FIN) and Letta Shtohryn (UKR/MT). Operating from a platform of call and response, each artist will produce work centred on various imagistic and text-based prompts sent by one of the other two. This process seeks to explore methods of translation: from simulated to real, from personal to referential and vice versa. Starting from a shared interest in objectness, the thematic for these exchanges will endeavour to dematerialise the material or, conversely, materialise the immaterial. Where: Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta Mondays: 9am to 5pm Tuesdays to Fridays: 9am to 9pm Saturdays & Sundays: 10am to 9pm www.kreattivita.org
Not to be missed:
14. 06. 19
From 14 to 28 June, Studio 87 hosts Out of Context, a solo exhibition by artist Saneeya Ghadially. Born in Karachi, Pakistan, Ghadially will display a series of paintings executed in the Persian Miniature style, a tradition of her home country. Originating from the Ottoman Empire, these Persian elements will be juxtaposed with European-Christian elements along with a Maltese context influenced by her stay here in Malta. This fusion of different cultures relates directly to her own feelings of familiarity with the Maltese culture and a sense of nostalgia.
In Gozo:
04. 12. 19
Arthall and Dutch gallery Spright-Art present Wabi-Sabi, an exhibition of sculptures, collages and paintings made with found objects and original mixed media creations, all centred on the Japanese aesthetic of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”. This group show by artists Be Birza, Frances R, Fabrizio Fabbroni and M. Van Gelder will run from 12 April to 5 May.
Image: Be Birza
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Highlights MALETH/HAVEN/PORT Heterotopias of Evocation Malta Pavilion Biennale Arte 2019
ATLANTROP-X As an artist I am interested in the tension between the aporetic visibility or invisibility of border-crossing, and the fluid or mobile zones of crisis. Altantropa-X at the Maltese Pavilion will testify a topos, a transcultural space, a neuralgic border zone, in which multiple and heterogeneous crossings are performed
Klitsa Antoniou, Atlantropa-X, 2019, installation detail, wood, seaweed, video projections, dimensions variable. Visualizations of Ocean Current Flows Cred-
it: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, Refugees Visual Documents Credit: Omega Television Channel, Cyprus.
and intertwined, attractive in its diversity, but also confusing in its dynamism. Atlantropa-X draws on this plural space, on a territory in which nowadays has new challenges launched and pursued, charged with history but also with conflicts.
Spotlight / Events / Global Mar – May –‘19 PAINTING + SCULPTURE
01 – 07. ‘19
A selection of art events from around the world
Events until October
26.01. 19
13. 02. 1 9
2 4 .0 2 .1 9
2 6 .0 3 .1 9
31.03.19
13.04.19
A P L A C E T H AT E X I S T S O N LY IN MOONLIGHT: K AT I E PAT E R S O N AND JMW T UR NER
DIANE ARBUS: IN THE B E G I NN I N G
JOAN MIRÓ. THE BIRTH OF THE WORLD
NANCY SPERO: PA P E R M I R R O R
This exhibition explores the first seven years of photographer Diane Arbus’s career, from 1956 to 1962, and is the first solo show of her work in the UK for 12 years. Arbus’ photographs of children and eccentrics, couples and circus performers, female impersonators and pedestrians are among the most intimate, surprising and haunting works of art of the 20th century. Organised by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, it features nearly 100 photographs, the majority of which have never before been exhibited in Europe.
Drawn from MoMA’s unrivalled collection of Miró’s work and augmented by several key loans, this exhibition places the key painting – The Birth of the World – in relation to other major works by the artist. It presents some 60 paintings, works on paper, prints, illustrated books and objects – produced primarily between 1920, the year of Miró’s first, catalytic trip to Paris and the early 1950s, when his unique visual language became internationally renowned – to shed new light on the development of his poetic process and pictorial universe.
BLACK MODELS: FROM GÉRIC A U LT T O M AT I S S E
C H I H U LY A T KEW: REFLECTIONS O N N AT UR E
Until 6 May
The largest UK exhibition to date of work by Scottish artist Katie Paterson, paired with watercolours by JMW Turner. Turner Contemporary is commissioning Paterson to make a new work that will encompass the colour of the universe from its very beginning to its eventual end. Like Paterson, JMW Turner was fascinated by the sublime wonder of nature, capturing the changing and atmospheric qualities of light, air and weather in his paintings. Paterson has selected a group of over 20 Turner watercolours and paintings to be interspersed with her works. Turner Contemporary www.turnercontemporary. org
Until 6 May
Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London www.southbankcentre.co.uk Image: Jack Dracula at a bar, New London, Conn. 1961 (detail), by courtesy of The Met Museum of Art, New York, copyright © The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC.
Until 6 July
The Museum of Modern Art, New York www.moma.org Image: Joan Miró. The Birth of the World. Montroig, late summer– fall 1925. Acquired through an anonymous fund, the Mr and Mrs Joseph Slifka Fund, the Armand G. Erpf Fund and by gift of the artist. © 2018 Successió Miró/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Until 21 July
A multi-disciplinary exhibition exploring aesthetic, political, social and racial issues as well as the imagery unveiled by the representation of black figures in visual arts, from the abolition of slavery in France to the modern day. The exhibition focuses on the question of models and therefore the dialogue between the artist and the model. It explores the evolution of the representation of black subjects in major works by Théodore Géricault, Charles Cordier, Edouard Manet, Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse, as well as the photographs of Nadar and Carjat. Musée d’Orsay, Paris www.musee-orsay.fr Image: Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Olympia, 1863, Oil on canvas, Paris, Musée d’Orsay, offered to the French State by public subscription initiated by Claude Monet, 1890 ©RMN, Hervé Lewandowski
Until 23 June
Paper Mirror traces the full arc of Spero’s artistic evolution, bringing together more than 100 works produced over six decades in the first major museum exhibition in the US since the artist’s death in 2009. Artist and activist Nancy Spero produced a radical body of work that confronted oppression and inequality while challenging the aesthetic orthodoxies of contemporary art. She drew on archetypal representations of women across cultures and times to reframe history itself from a perspective that she termed ‘woman as protagonist’. MoMA PS1, New York www.momaps1.org
Until 27 October
Iconic artist Dale Chihuly will exhibit his luminous glass artworks in the landscape of Kew Gardens. Art installations, including Chihuly’s Rotolo and Seaforms series, will be located around the grounds, in greenhouses and in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art in the Gardens. Chihuly’s famous blue masterpiece Sapphire Star will be on show at Victoria Gate, while a new, site-specific, work will be exhibited at Temperate House. Kew Gardens, London www.kew.org/kew-gardens
Image: Nancy Spero. The Goddess Nut II. 1990. Hand-printing and printed collage on paper. © 2019 The Nancy Spero and Leon Golub Foundation for the Arts/ Licensed by VAGA at ARS, NY, courtesy of Galerie Lelong & Co. Photo: Michael Bodycomb
07. 03 .1 9 Until 10 June In the UAE: Curated by Zoe Butt, Omar Kholeif and Claire Tancons, the Sharjah Biennial 14: Leaving the Echo Chamber will showcase three unique exhibitions and works by more than 80 participant artists, including over 60 new commissions. The Biennial will be on view across the city’s arts and heritage areas as well as other spaces around the emirate of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates between 7 March and 10 June. www.sharjahart.org
04. 04 .1 9 Until 7 April Art Fair: Supermarket is an international, artist-run art fair that provides a showcase for artists’ initiatives from all over the world and creates opportunities for new networks, collaborating with many not-for-profit exhibition spaces in the city. In addition to the exhibition, the event includes a seminar programme, a performance art stage and a meeting programme for networking. Supermarket runs from 4 to 7 April in Stockholm. www.supermarketartfair.com Image: Piece by Al Fadhil (IQ), exhibited by AllArtNow at Supermarket 2018, Photo Tijana Pajovic
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Interview / Malta / Ritty Tacsum Mar – May –‘19 MALTA
where she lays her head
Ritty Tacsum is currently presenting an intimate and personal body of work: photography focusing on the sea (represented through the element of water), and the bed (representing the intimacy of interior spaces). To find out more about her work process and her way of thinking, we put some questions to Ritty (RT) and her curator and long-time collaborator, Lisa Gwen Baldacchino (LGB).
or figurative work. I think it is the way I am wired: I enjoy challenging myself, as well as the viewers. I believe it is also a representation of who I am as a person. LGB: There has always been a degree of ambiguity in Ritty’s work – from her very first exhibition in 2011. I think that, back then, it was more overt and now it’s become more subtle. In fact, her first images were labelled surreal – also because her dreams were literally a point of departure for her compositions, for each of the photoshoots she orchestrated. Her current body of work has less of that orchestrated or staged ambiguity and more of an autobiographic element.
In the past, you’ve used quite intricate manipulation of photographs, repeating or mirroring architectural images and creating imaginary landscapes. Your current work, however, seems to focus more on the human body; can you explain a bit about this development in your work? RT: I think development in one’s work is quite a natural process. Even though I still create architectural work which is highly manipulated, my primary focus has shifted towards the human body. There’s a certain element of rawness which has held my interest for a couple of years now. I love the dynamics of working with people, especially in the past few months, so much so that the number of people I work with on any one shoot has become more ambitious. Before, it was just the model and myself, but in the last couple of months I’ve had up to nine models working together. LGB: Actually, I’d say that Ritty is returning to the human body. In her first exhibition, her work was all about the body, or rather the imagined bodies of her
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humanoids. What is markedly different is that she no longer feels the need to mask, to give them an alternative persona or semblance. Her figures are no longer anthropomorphic. Instead she captures them as they are, in their bare nakedness.
Can you tell us a bit more about your work process: how do you start to put an image together, what are your thoughts during this development and how much do you feel you need to stay in control of the final image?
There are layers of meaning in your work: vulnerability, peace, even some humour. At the same time, your new images create scenes that not only impart meaning but are also quite enigmatic and difficult to unpack. Is this ambiguity important to your new body of work, and was it important to your work before?
RT: I always have an idea in my mind of what the final image will look like, but the beauty of an unknown location, the weather and the dynamic between me and the model(s) always influence the overall aesthetic of the final image. Sometimes the result is wonderful, other times I just discard the photos after the shoot and call it a day. >>
RT: The element of ambiguity has always been important in the work I create, be it for my architectural
Interview / Malta / Ritty Tacsum Mar – May –‘19 MALTA
The colour palette of this exhibition is very serene: quite subdued and almost reticent. How important were these colours to the atmosphere you built in the images? RT: The choice of colours for my images has been quite consistent in the last couple of years, primarily because I feel it enhances the mood I want to portray in my images. The colour palette for me is essential as it unites the mood and feeling into a holistic whole. LGB: Ritty’s choice of colour palette was previously sporadic, spread across works created over a span of time. Now this deep greyish blue-green tone has almost become her signature – and one which characterises and almost defines her entire body of work. It is not unlike the colour of the tempestuous sea: it is almost impenetrable. In its density, it stops being cold and almost achieves an uncanny sense of warmth, which is juxtaposed by her alabaster white bodies.
The idea of the bed as a refuge is a beautiful one: quite calming and comforting. It’s also a very personal sentiment. Do you see your work as autobiographical and how much of yourself do you expose in your work? RT: In my first exhibition, back in 2011, I put a bed next to the works on display (an unconscious reference to Tracey Emin). At the time, the bed had a significant meaning for me... I was going through a difficult patch and I spent most of my time in it, creating works in my own bedroom. Nowadays, the bed has different meanings to me: pain, love, joy – it is one of the only places where I find myself, over and over again. And, yes, to some extent my work is autobiographical: some images are a clear depiction of an experience while others are simply a thought or a fantasy. LGB: Having worked with Ritty since her very first exhibition in 2011, I have never stopped studying and following her work. I couldn’t help reading the
patterns which emerged organically. And that is how this exhibition was born: understanding the patterns related to the sea, to water and to intimate, confined spaces such as her bed. And, yes, the work is autobiographical – whether it taps into reality or fantasy is another matter, but it is a reflection of the self, even though she may not always be aware of it. Do you think the relationship to the sea as a place of refuge and solace is intrinsic to a Maltese landscape, or do you think of it as a more universal theme? RT: Growing up on an island, it is impossible not to build a strong relationship with the sea. The sea has always had a great meaning in my life, and I feel it represents the duality in myself – at times calm, and at times rough, with no in-betweens. Where I Lay Down is on show at the Palazzo de la Salle, Republic Street, Valletta until 28 March.
Images © Ritty Tacsum
NEWS / MoMA
MoMA Reveals Final Design for Expansion and Renovation
T
he Museum of Modern Art in New York has announced that its ambitious expansion project, adding more than 40,000 square feet of gallery space to the museum, will be completed by October 2019. The design, by architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, is intended to better connect the museum with its midtown Manhattan neighbourhood and to allow the museum to exhibit much more of its collection. The expansion project will include new street-level galleries with a dedicated Projects Room and a gallery for contemporary design, as well as a new fully customised studio space for media, performance, and film. The entire first floor, including the new galleries, will be open to the public free of charge. MoMA will reopen in October with an updated curatorial vision and live, experimental programming.
Northsouth section-perspective through the new gallery spaces at The Museum of Modern Art, looking east along Fifty-third Street. © 2017 Diller Scofidio + Ren
View of the restored Bauhaus staircase, with Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Staircase (1932). Photo by Iwan Baan
Elevation of The Museum of Modern Art on Fifty-third Street with cutaway view below street level. © 2017 Diller Scofidio + Renfro
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Review / Tate Modern / Pierre Bonnard Mar – May –‘19
Highlights
LONDON
GEORGE MICALLEF EYNAUD
The Colour of Memory
Walking into one of the Tate Modern’s galleries on a decidedly grey London morning, I was caught in my tracks, unprepared for what lay in store. Before me was a scene of pure Dionysian serenity. The dreary tone of that January day, that otherwise lifeless room, was suddenly offset by two sunlit interiors. In them were two nudes, women whose lithe forms were described, almost crudely, in a cadence of the most exquisite pinks, reds, ambers, honey and green, and I was faced with a dance of light, of heaven-sent colour. Those women glowed with the warm flame of life, of humanity, of sexuality, of a tame place to call home and the wild and fearsome spirit of the Mediterranean landscape all at the same time. Forget the devil; it was salvation that I found in those details: the clean crockery awaiting the midday meal, an empty chair, the tidy room, the perennial dachshund nuzzling its head on the chequered tablecloth in close anticipation, the glimpse of the brilliant blue sea outside. And suddenly, out of this mundaneness, this crystallised moment of expectation never to be fulfilled, all of existence seemed to have finally found its purpose.
It is always a delight to discover a painting that can have such a magical hold over you, and I use the word ‘magic’ here without embarrassment or hesitation. For what Bonnard pulls off time and again is nothing short of a magic trick, except here there is often real enchantment at play, not just smoke and mirrors. Working from memory, Bonnard immortalises hazy recollections in paint, transcribing them into beautifully amorphous visions where everyday objects become both iconised and simultaneously intertwined within a much wider composition. In Bonnard, the subject of the picture is rarely any one particular ‘thing’, the edges of the canvas are always
Pierre Bonnard, Coffee (Le Café) 1915, Oil paint on canvas, Tate
As this comprehensive retrospective demonstrates, Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) is the kind of painter who makes you consider such fleeting moments, and to do so, he demands your attention. A slow worker, often obsessively returning to work on the same
canvas over a period of many years, he invades your field of vision with an eclectic array of subjects, taking your very eyes hostage, insisting you become a slow looker in turn. Studying another small nude, this time with her back turned to the viewer, her figure enigmatically concealed by a doorway, a frame within a frame, I could feel the heat of the warm sun as it hit her back, illuminating the gentle swell of her hips with all the warmth of an evening sunset. It was a pure summer’s evening encapsulated in pigment and, looking at it, as with Proust and his Madeline, I was transported straight back, back to those long childhood days lounging on the rocks by the murmuring sea as the sun inched below the horizon.
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Review / Tate Modern / Pierre Bonnard Mar – May –‘19
George Micallef Eynaud studied Fine Art at the Camberwell College of Arts and is currently based in London.
LONDON
the world outside those ever-present doors, those somewhat oppressively-patterned walls. Sometimes all the decoration, the rhythmically composed grids and lattices of vibrant hues, start to resemble a gilded cage, a prettily-tiled prison of either Marthe’s making, or of Bonnard’s own construction. In another painting, Bonnard places his recent fiancée alongside his then-lover (Marthe) in an image of uneasy Arcadian placidity. Knowing that his bride-to-be would go on to kill herself when Bonnard called off the engagement to take up with Marthe, and that the existence of each woman was kept secret from the other in reality, lends this painting an eerie, haunted quality in spite of its sun-dappled surface. Indeed, the guilt that this event caused Bonnard apparently drove him to paint a series of much darker paintings than normal which may also have served as the artist’s commentary of sorts on two World Wars which are otherwise conspicuous only by their total absence, and it seems remiss that this period of the artist’s career is not expounded on further at the Tate. Bonnard himself could be artistically uneven, too. Much ink has been spilt in outlining his skill (or lack thereof) in drawing at the technically proficient level that was advanced in the academic circles of the time, but I would protest this point, citing the aforementioned notebook sketches as evidence of a keen and refined sense of draughtsmanship. The wealth of intimate photographs taken by Bonnard and Marthe reveal another fascinatingly modern sense of experimentation with medium and reproduction, serving as direct sources for his painted scenes after being altered and rearranged. Pierre Bonnard, Nude in an Interior c. 1935, National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA
full of potential and activity, fragments of cropped figures like unwanted intruders in a family photograph. This could be the result of Bonnard’s working method – consistently revisiting unstretched canvases that hung on his studio wall, working and reworking them right to the edge – or it may be the result of a more thought-out pictorial strategy, as attested by the hundreds of carefully considered and annotated compositional sketches that abound in the exhibition. In any case, the resulting sensation is that the scenes depicted exist outside the confine of the canvas and that life – messy and uncontrolled – continues to exist beyond the parameters of the frame.
This aspect of Bonnard’s practice, which has only recently been given any serious attention by academics, is all the more engaging to a contemporary audience as it so directly pertains to the very current discourse about the relationship between painting
and photography (one need only think of the much more recent painterly translation of photographs in the work of artists such as Gerhard Richter and Luc Tuymans, for example). In my opinion, it also places Bonnard in a much more direct conversation with some of his French Impressionist predecessors (Mary Cassatt, Edouard Manet) as well as some of his other contemporaries further abroad such as the British artist Walter Sickert, who portrayed scenes of domestic mendacity while working extensively from press and personal photographs and with whom Bonnard’s work has been surprisingly unaligned. Unlike a more figuratively astute artist such as Sickert, however, Bonnard’s somewhat lackadaisical approach to human anatomy is another aspect of his limitation as an academic draughtsman that can, on occasion, become somewhat distracting, especially as you begin to try and comprehend the mechanics of his arms and legs which often suffer from the same sausage-meat syndrome that affect many of his predecessor Turner’s similarly disjointed figures. A more critical curatorial eye could have been applied to this end during the selection process, especially as the show feels somewhat overstuffed as it is. Ultimately, however, these are minor quibbles, as even Bonnard’s minor works leave us with much to admire. And when he is good, he is so very, very good. Some of his paintings, such as his lush gardens, enigmatic bathroom scenes and receding sea-backed landscapes are, once seen, unforgettable, where all else coalesces into a divine whole, rendering anatomy and perspective into irrelevant foibles. In Bonnard’s best work, to paraphrase John Fowles, he anoints even the most trivial of moments with an unexpected and stimulating reverence, so that the moment, and all such moments, can never be entirely trivial again. Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory is on show at the Tate Modern until 6 May.
What Bonnard does, with great conviction, is make us reconsider the intrinsic value of the ‘things’ that make up the word around us – be they a jug, a cat, a tree or a bath – so that all of a sudden, they are everything and nothing all at once. In Bonnard’s hermetically sealed-off world, a bath might be just a bath, but it also seems imbued with immense symbolic value, as a source of life, a sustaining vessel, a transitory space, a site of transformation. It may also lend itself to a more psychologically-charged reading, a refuge for his wife Marthe, by all accounts a somewhat troubled and reclusive figure, often and famously depicted submerged in the bath, both purifying and distancing herself from Pierre Bonnard, Nude in the Bath (Nu dans le bain) 1936-8.Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Roger-Viollet
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Innovative Mapplethorpe Exhibition
Highlights
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Choreography for an Exhibition brings a multidisciplinary exhibition, starring international choreographers, to Naples. The exhibition features over 160 works, displayed alongside archaeological, ancient and modern pieces, in addition to a site-specific dance programme commissioned to celebrate the performative and physical aspects of Mapplethorpe’s photography. >>
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Art News / Europe / Africa
Highlights
Mar – May –‘19 ANNIVERSARIES
ART MARKET
Giant Anniversaries in 2019
Modern & Contemporary African Art Sale 2 APRIL 2019 | 2:00 PM BST | LONDON
2019 has the dubious honour of celebrating the anniversaries of the deaths of two giants of art history. This year is the 350th anniversary of the death of Rembrandt in 1669. His home country of the Netherlands is paying homage to this Old Master with exhibitions in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the
Mauritshuis in The Hague and the Museum De Lakenhall in Leiden. 2019 is also the 500th anniversary of the death of the great Leondardo da Vinci in 1519. A retrospective at the Louvre, and an eight-month long programme in Milan centred around the Castello Sforzesco will mark the occasion.
Sotheby’s fourth dedicated auction of Modern and Contemporary African Art will take place in London on 2 April 2019 and will include a specially curated collection of paintings, photographs, drawings and sculpture from the 20th and 21st centuries from across the African continent. Highlights from this sale include works by respected artists, including El Anatsui, Hassan El Glaoui, Skunder Boghossian, Ibrahim El Salahi, Ablade Glover and Cheri Samba. www.sothebys.com
Chéri Samba Petit Parcelle de pouvoir Est: $20 – $30k
Self Portrait at the Age of 34, Rembrandt
Ablade Glover Market Scene Est: $6 – $8k
The Virgin and Child with St Anne, Leonardo da Vinci
COLOUR
What Colour is 2019? As January rolls around, designers, art enthusiasts and fashionistas keep an eager eye out for the Pantone Colour of the Year. This year they weren’t disappointed, with the warm, energising Living Coral. Influencing design and product development globally, the Pantone Colour of the Year is selected with an eye on trends and colour influences. This year’s colour draws on a human need for connection, warmth and activity; evocative of coral reefs, it is natural and soft, yet energetic and bright. www.pantone.com
BREXIT LOOMING CLOSER With a Brexit deal - or even news of how the United Kingdom will leave the EU - still a long way off, the art world, like other industries, is trying to understand how a no-deal, or any deal will impact the sector. In January, Arts Council England went so far as to publish advice on the movement of art imports and exports in the case of a no-deal. The UK government has also published guidelines on issues such as the export of objects of cultural interest if an agreement is not reached. Meanwhile, artists with links both in the UK and in other EU countries are acting to ensure that their careers and inventories are not caught up in a post-Brexit bureaucratic nightmare.
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Eddy Kamuanga Palm Est: $25 – $35k
Hassan El Glaoui La Sorite de Sultan Est: $80 – $12k
Artistic Director of Sonsbeek 2020 Announced Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung has been appointed artistic director of Sonsbeek 2020. The 12th edition of the quadrennial art festival will take place in and around Arnhem during the summer of 2020. Ndikung, born in Cameroon, was appointed by unanimous recommendation of an international selection committee; he is a curator, art critic, author and biotechnologist, as well as the founder and artistic director of SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin. He was also curator-at-large of Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, and was guest curator of the 2018 Dak’Art Biennale in Senegal. This year, he will be curating the Finnish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, as part of Miracle Workers Collective of which he is a co-founder.
Spotlight / Exhibition / Naples Mar – May –‘19 NAPLES
>> cont. from page 35 Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) grew up in the conservative and racially divided 1950s America to become one of the most critically acclaimed photographers of the 20th century. He was a controversial representative of New York’s underground scene during the ‘70s and ‘80s and died at the age of 43 due to complications from HIV/AIDS. In the thirty years since his death Mapplethorpe has become a cultural icon.
Patti Smith,1978 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.
The exhibition – curated by Laura Valente and Andrea Viliani – is a combination of Mapplethorpe’s photographic work, site-specific performances, and installations providing glimpses into the artist’s studio and private lives. Choreography for an Exhibition is on show at Madre Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina, in Naples until 8 April. www.madrenapoli.it
“Over 160 works, alongside archaeological and modern pieces, and a specially-commissioned site-specific dance programme.”
Campari is marketed and distributed by Farsons Beverage Imports Co. Ltd. Trade Enquiry: 23814400
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Art News / UK
Highlights
Mar – May –‘19 UK
The Blackest Black British artist Stuart Semple has continued his protest against the purchase by Anish Kapoor of the world’s so-called ‘blackest black’. When, in 2016, Kapoor acquired the exclusive rights to use Vantablack, a pigment developed by Surrey NanoSystems in the UK, and one of the darkest known substances due to its extreme light-trapping qualities, the acquisition set off a series of protest acts by artists, who in turn created extreme colours, allowing them to be used freely by all practitioners except from Kapoor himself.
ultra-matte acrylic paint that absorbs over 98% of visible light, and aims to make it accessible to artists globally. It remains to be seen if this campaign will prompt any further acts of colour-ownership from either artist. www.culturehustle.com
Semple and his studio Culture Hustle have gone one step further, setting up a Kickstarter campaign for research into the development into an even ‘blacker’ black. The campaign has raised over €200,000 for the development of Black 3.0, a user-friendly
MALTA
Exhibition: Inspired by China Four Maltese artists who travelled to China during 2018 are exhibiting their work in an itinerant exhibition hosted by the China Cultural Centre in Malta. In an annual initiative that allows Maltese artists to experi-
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ence China’s diverse cultures, the artists - Debbie Bonello, Andrew Borg, Damian Ebejer and Lucienne Spiteri - were invited to visit the coastal province of Fujian, known as the birthplace of the ancient Maritime Silk Road.
The exhibition, the sixth in the series, is curated by E. V. Borg, who has long been an active partner of the Inspired in China initiative. The observations of the artists during their travels are interpreted through oil on canvas, water-colours, Chinese
ink and photography. Acute observations in China have been reflected upon by each artist, and are now interpreted in each artist’s individual style. Inspired in China will be on show at the Cavalieri Art Hotel in St Julian’s from 23 March to 28 May, at the Business Centre, Malta Interna-
tional Airport from 29 May to 28 August, and at the Mediterranean Conference Centre in Valletta from 1 to 17 September. More information on www.malta.cccweb.org.
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 / Senegal Mar – May –‘19 AFRICA
CHRISTINE XUEREB SEIDU
T
Dynamic Senegal before travelling to the Wright Museum of Art in Wisconsin and the Kent State University Centre for Visual Art Gallery. Between July and October of this year it will also be on show at the Zuccaire Gallery at Stony Brook University, New York.
he recent opening of Dakar’s Museum of Black Civilisations, amid heated debates about reclaiming art taken from colonisers, has sparked a new personal interest in Senegalese art, even though Senegal’s capital already houses one of the oldest West African art institutions, l’Institute Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) Museum of African Arts. The IFAN serves as the main site of the Dak’Art Biennale. Dak’Art, a Dakar-based exhibition of contemporary African art, has been operating bi-annually since 1996, and is the African continent’s longest running grand-scale art event. Since 2014 it has also been open to non-African artists. This art biennale paved the way for the opening of several art galleries and residencies in Dakar and nearby. The Leopold Sedar Senghor Galerie at the Village des Arts, Loman Art Gallery, Yassine Arts Gallery, La Galerie Antenna and Wakh Art are a few to mention. OH Gallery is another gallery which only opened recently, representing some of the best Senegalese expressionist and cubist artists such as Aliou Diack, Kine Aw, Amadou Camara Gueye, Pape Samba Ndiaye, and the duo currently exhibiting Oeuvres until 31 March 2019: Sambou Diouf and Soly Cisse. Aliou Diack will have his first solo exhibition at the gallery in October and November of this year. Galerie Arte also holds regular exhibitions, its most recent being Sama Dekk-Ma Ville by the highly stylised
Horror District, 2018, Ibrahima Dieye
contemporary figurative artist, Ibrahima Gningue, and Galerie le Manege-Institute Francais is holding a duo exhibition, with Ibrahima Dieye` and Badou Diack, from 19 March. The Thread, a cultural centre and artist residency operating in rural Sinthian since 2015, works with artists who have a genuine interest in the area, providing an opportunity to create cultural bridges through opening its doors to locals. Similarly, but in Dakar, the Raw Material Company gallery and residency, curated by Koyo Kouoh, produces exceptional contemporary art shows, mainly featuring international artists. Senegalese art also caught the interest of Kent State University Assistant Professor Dr Joseph Underwood, who recently curated the exhibition The View from Here: Contemporary Perspectives from Senegal, which focuses on
individuals uncovering aspects of their identity as they reflect on everyday life in contemporary Senegal. “Artists across Senegal think deeply about the world around them, in both a local and a global sense” said Underwood, when asked why he focused on Senegalese artworks. “Many of them excel at leveraging the various institutions to reach new audiences and further their art-making practices. It’s one of the most dynamic art spaces on the continent and in the global south”. The exhibition includes work by some of the best contemporary artists currently active in Senegal: Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Manthia Diawara, Khalifa Dieng, Ibrahima Dieye, Pap Souleye Fall, Camara Gueye, Amalia Ramanankirahhina, Henri Sagna, Fatou Kande Senghor, Fally Sene Sow and Ibrahima Thiam. This exhibition was shown in the OFF at last year’s Dak’Art Biennale,
Senegalese artist Fally Sene Sow has recently completed a residency in Madrid and will soon be showing a solo exhibition in collaboration with TRAMES in Dakar, as well as exhibiting at the Beirut Art Fair in September. Fellow contemporary sculptor Mamady Seydi will be exhibiting at the Datris Foundation in France this summer, whilst Ibrahima Thiam will be at the Forum Transculturel d’Art Contemporain in Haiti in October. Viya Diba, Diadji Diop, Mamadou Cisse, Omar Ba, Eric Pina and Ndoye Douts are amongst other artists who are also making a name for themselves locally and internationally. Senegalese contemporary artists who are expanding beyond borders are many. Maimouna Guerresi, who is represented by Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Seattle, USA, is exhibiting in art fairs in Mexico, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates this year, and will produce a solo show in Girona, Spain in June. Amongst Senegal’s contemporary photographers, we have the celebrated Omar Victor Diop, who is reconstructing Africans in history, as well as Delphine Diallo, Boubacar Toure Mandemory, Arebenor Bassene and Djibril Drame. In the world of fashion, there is Selly Reby Kane and if you are after some African interior décor for your home, try IKEA – which has recently signed her up as one of its designers!
“Artists across Senegal think deeply about the world around them, in both a local and a global sense” The View from Here: Contemporary Perspectives from Senegal, Kent State University. Courtesy of the School of Art Gallery.
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Review / Lucio Fontana / New York Mar – May –‘19
Highlights
NEW YORK
>> cont. from cover
ANN DINGLI
The cuts endure, as does the unknown Spatial Concept, The Quanta (Concetto Spaziale, I Quanta), 1959,Water-based paint on canvas with slashes, Private collection, Italy
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But looking at just one image showing his most recognisable slashes – which he referred to as Tagli (Cuts) – would sit comfortably within anyone’s realm of recognition. Ask anybody whether they know of his meticulously painted canvases – many white, a few in earthy tones, some in a brilliant primary colour – with a large laceration or lacerations defiantly peering through to a realm of darkness beyond and they would say – yes, of course I know them. Fontana’s elegantly hacked paintings have become visual signifiers of the moment when art began to discard conventional notions of what painting and sculpting needed to be. They signify the complex ambitions of Contemporary Art, its need to redefine its own position and assert its role in describing the meaning of the world around us and our place within it. But, truthfully, Fontana’s Cuts came a lot sooner than many of the most prevalent contemporary theories had a chance to really lay claim over the art world. They laid the foundation for Conceptual, Performance, and Minimalist Art simply by virtue of wanting to accomplish a singular, albeit lofty, goal: to meaningfully capture the precise moment in time when they were created and to do so by distilling movement, time, colour, space and sound into one conceivable artistic operation or, as Fontana and his contemporaries put it in their White Manifesto, to capture a “moment of synthesis”.
ANN DINGLI is a freelance art and design writer, content consultant, and media strategist currently living in New York. She writes and edits for various cultural publications and runs her own design blog, I think I like it (think-like-it.com).
Review / Lucio Fontana / New York Mar – May –‘19 NEW YORK
“The climactic rupturing of canvas finally releases Fontana’s body of work from the realms of experimentation into unequivocal theoretical certainty.” Despite Fontana’s subliminal ubiquity, his latest retrospective – Lucio Fontana: On the Threshold, showing at the Met Breuer until mid-April – is only the second display of his work to take place in New York: the last took place over 40 years ago. Fontana first took a Stanley knife to his canvas in 1958, but he had been punching holes and experimenting with penetration into the fourth dimension for around 10 years by then, marking his visionary movement into gestural art-making at roughly the same time as Jackson Pollock began creating his drip paintings. Needless to say, Pollock has enjoyed categorically superior action in the New York retrospective shows department. Still, the show at the Met Breuer serves to soundly – if succinctly – cement Fontana’s unmistakable, and multi-layered influence on Contemporary Art.
early days, working primarily as a sculptor, occupy the precursory rooms in the exhibition. Sculpture was the backdrop to Fontana’s upbringing. His father was a funerary sculptor working in Rosario, Argentina, making tomb sculptures for local cemeteries. In his twenties, he moved to Milan, Italy and received classical training in carving at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. But, as evidenced by the works on display in the show, Fontana’s sculpting predilections favoured brazen, perceptible modelling rather than classical carving. He worked like a Baroque sculptor in a hurry, exuding zealous motion whilst sublimating influences from Etruscan sarcophagi and Futurist sculpture into figures and objects that at once revere and defy all art movements that came before them.
You can feel him getting there once your reach his Buchi (Holes). Textured, seemingly extra-terrestrial, terrain is poked, punctured and drawn into, creating a topography that provokes and ultimately upends dimensionality. By now, Fontana is done with representational sculpture, but he’s not entirely painting. These works are not regular easel paintings; they are devices with which to explore ‘Spatial Concepts’ – which is the apt title he gave to his first perforated works.
It does so not without allowing viewers a brief glimpse at what came before the artist’s most renowned breakthrough: his
Moving through the exhibition, it is easy to feel as though you are searching for Fontana’s eventual signature style – con-
The climactic rupturing of canvas finally releases Fontana’s body of work from the realms of experimentation into unequivo-
Spatial Concept, The End of God (Concetto Spaziale, La Fine di Dio), 1964, Oil on canvas with holes and incisions, RachofskyCollection, Dallas
ditioning your eye to recognise a glimmer of what is inevitably to come. You can palpably feel the artist searching for the means through which to signify the true expression of the universe: a visual search to put an end to what he would eventually declare as man having “exhausted pictorial and sculptural forms of art”.
cal theoretical certainty. It’s no wonder he has been quoted as being “happy to go to the grave after such a discovery”. With one decisive slash, Fontana was now able to contend with the notions of space and infinity, to create an entry point into a new dimension that persists beyond art. He backed many of his cut works with black gauze, intensifying the illusion of endlessness and thus allowing viewers to contemplate what for them is the unknown. Viscerally, Fontana had come far away from where he started, but notionally he was still embroiled in the same preoccupations: achieving the physical representation of existence and its intricacies, of that which is undetermined, of the beyond – perhaps of that by which he had already been confronted with while growing up in the care of a funerary sculptor: death.
minds us that, despite having achieved an artistic approach which, to this day, feels so categorically resolved, he was still searching, still grappling. This very human exploration is perhaps why so many people know and are drawn to Fontana’s work. Indeed, his cut canvases deliver us to a threshold – one which separates us from what we can conceivably possess and what we cannot because, even though we can now identify the darkness of infinity, we are still nowhere near to understanding it. Lucio Fontana: On the Threshold, is on show at the Met Breuer, New York, until 14 April
Fontana is known to have inscribed the back of his cut canvases with personal messages, varying from the theoretical to the ordinary: an act that re-
Spatial Concept, New York 10 (Concetto Spaziale, New York 10), 1962,Copper with slashes and scratches, Fondazione Lucio Fontana, Milan
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TMYT PRESENTS W I L L I A M G O L D I N G ’ S
DIRECTED BY I A N M OO R E
FRIDAY 12TH APRIL 7PM, SATURDAY 13TH APRIL 3PM & 7PM SUNDAY 14TH APRIL 3PM & 7PM, TEATRU MANOEL, VALLETTA Tickets €10 / bookings@teatrumanoel.mt / T. 21246389 / www.teatrumanoel.mt
GIULIA PRIVITELLI holds an M.A. in History of Art, and is presently Assistant Editor at Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti. She is also a freelance writer, regularly contributing culture-related articles to various local newspapers, magazines and blogs.
Books / Malta Mar – May –‘19 MALTA
GIULIA PRIVITELLI
Into no man’s land, we march “Hee with a crew, whom like Ambition joyns, With him or under him to tyrannize, Marching from Eden towards the West, shall finde The Plain, wherein a black bituminous gurge Boiles out from under ground, the mouth of Hell; Of Brick, and of that stuff they cast to build A Cities and Tower, whose top may reach to Heav’n; And get themselves a name…” John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book XII, 38-45
Steve Bonello, plate 98, 2017, from No Man’s Land (2018)
Steve Bonello, plate 30, 2011, from No Man’s Land (2018)
Steve Bonello, plate 160, 2017, from No Man’s Land (2018)
For some reason - I was initially not entirely sure why - the moment I cracked open No Man’s Land and began reading through its first pages Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost came to mind. I re-read the verses describing the construction of the Tower of Babel, and I understood. Then I encountered the first illustration of the publication and sure enough an ominous feeling swinging somewhere between a Davidic Psalm and Dante’s Inferno crept its way in, nudging my fingers to the edge of the paper, turning it slowly; that hopeful journey for an irretrievable something had begun. However, the beginning is not always a comfortable place to be; the journey in No Man’s Land, in truth, begins from the trenches. The signs of where we have failed are clearly marked; it is useless pretending that the place we are now is a good place to be, or that the crossing to our desired destination will be an easy one. From the trenches everything does indeed seem to be more exaggerated than it really is. Perhaps, it is better that way. For there is no shelter in No Man’s Land, and our crossing, it is almost certain, will be a crooked one with many twists, turns and doubts along the way. Let’s at least get one thing straight: this book is alarmingly easy to relate to; you’ll catch yourself nodding and sighing in agreement at situations you know only too well, but you will also find yourself shaking your head in disapproval at the state of things, possibly frowning in disappointment at your own lack of action or awareness, as was indeed my case. Though it might come across differently, the author and illustrator do not seek to judge anyone in particular nor anyone or anything in general, for that matter. What they do, however, is hold up a rather large mirror to all that has gone on around them over the past 20 years or so of life on the Islands; a mirror that has gathered at least 20 years of reflections (and dust); enough, by any moral standard and justice system, to allow for a fair comment – or even judgement – to be made on the state of things. The lament put forward in No Man’s Land is clearly based on sound statistical data, yet it comes nowhere close to a statistical report. In other words, it reads like a well-designed website would, with words and well-placed images ‘effortlessly’ linked to each other, and all the while without the reader ever having to give a moment’s thought to the brain-busting code running in the background. The author and the illustrator have already scratched their heads long enough so that we won’t have to; if we were indeed to scratch our heads, it would likely be due to our realisation (finally!) of how dire the situation really is.
Spread over just under three decades (the earliest illustrations published in the book date to 1991 issues of the Sunday Times of Malta), the strength of the audio-visual lament might have dissipated easily; it might have gone unnoticed except by those analytical individuals who were looking closely and making sense of whatever decisions were being taken – from public transportation to construction and infrastructure, waste management and pollution, changing demographics, illegalities, environmental policies or lack thereof, and so on and so forth. But when over 20 years are concentrated in a book with just under 240 pages of written text and illustrations, the lament inevitably escalates into a high-magnitude tremor. It is visible and audible; hardly an exaggeration, and impossible to ignore. It is almost as if something must be necessarily condensed together for it to be noticed – very much like the number of vehicles present on our roads, increasing construction cranes and population counts, rising apartment blocks… Sadly, as No Man’s Land reminds us, no single book will be able to contain, much less suppress or alleviate, the magnitude of our environmental injustices. But then again, all the more reason for good practices to be encouraged and such books to be written. Some might come to consider this book as a biased, claustrophobic reaction of a few environment-sensitive individuals to the apparent horror vacui or agoraphobic tendencies of an authority whose idea of ‘doing something’ only has real value if it can be seen, preferably in the form of a building. Do the voices in No Man’s Land attack fear, while they are themselves born of fear – fear of losing something irretrievable, that is, more of what has been lost already? They might be right to think so. It is after all, as the author puts it, a “tragedy”, and as we know, every tragedy is frightful. But let us not forget the other half: humour. “Wit”, Freud tells us, “permits us to make our enemy ridiculous through that which we could not utter loudly or consciously on account of existing hindrances”. It is the weapon by which both Marie Briguglio and Steve Bonello step into no man’s land – that unrestricted land where few indeed dare to step. Ultimately, their voices – with word and image – come through as apparently fearless, blunt, but as sharp as a double-edged sword, swishing and slashing to either side with impeccable aim, hardly ever missing. And that, friends, could only mean one thing: there is still hope. No Man’s Land: people, places & pollution by Marie Briguglio and Steve Bonello is published by Kite Group, Malta, 2018.
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