CURATOR'S DIARY
ARRIVALS MaltaTrip 20 November – 22 November, 2006
Monday 20
Arrived in Valletta (capital of Malta) and take a fast ferocious taxi ride through the steep fortress city. Time was 9pm. Went for walk, it was warm, really warm, a far cry from a cold November day in the UK. Valletta was a ghost town. Christmas lights with their lights turned off, not a soul in sight.
Tuesday 21
4 artists, 1 curator and a mother….
The day started at the British Council Offices in the centre of Valletta. Our first meeting was with the artist Mark Mangion, a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art. Mark was enthusiastic for changing the status quo.
Mark wants to create a space for artists to come together and exhibit and there was a real sense of enthusiasm and comittment that was admirable. This is an artist who has lived in New York and London, yet he has returned to this small island to give other artists opportunities to show their work. He showed us a video of his Iran project.
Charles Gatt, is also a musician. Lucy was rather excited about inviting Charles to work with Margate’s community.
Ruth Bianco the next artist we met had connections with Canterbury, where Lucy is based. Ruth lectures at UCCA and makes video installations.
Lunch with Ingrid Eomois – British Council officer for Malta and Chris Gatt, Director of St James Cavalier - a universal ‘contemporary’ arts space in an old ‘cavalier’, a type of fort that was built in the time of the St John Knights to defend Malta from Turkish attack. Pizza was good and it was interesting to learn about the agenda of St James, the only establishment in Malta, which shows contemporary art, but has an open doors policy that puts a weird slant on the programming and means that quality is not always very consistent (he openly admits this…)
After lunch took a boat across the harbour to see an artist’s mum! Helga Portanier was not around, but her mother had very kindly agreed to talk us through her work. We couldn’t stay long, unfortunately as we had to rush back to see Patrick Fenech, another member of the loose collective called ‘Start’.
Patrick showed us a selection of past work including photography and installation.
Once this meeting finished, we decided to go back to the hotel to drop things of before meeting Chris Gatt again at St James Cavalier, who took us to see some artists work in this amazing redundant old house in Valletta, where 24 artists had created a range of works relating to the theme of death. The work was eclectic and not quite right for this project, but it was good to see what the young artists are up to in Malta. Once again we were impressed by their energy and their determination to expose contemporary art to Maltese people and their freedom of expression.
After what was a very long day we went and sat outside to have dinner, and listened to a jazz band before heading back to the hotel to sleep.
Wednesday 22
Planes, Ferries and Automobiles……..
We all had to be ready by 8.00am for a 40 minute taxi ride to the ferry port at Cirkewwa, which would take us to Gozo. What was interesting about the ride, was that we realised how small Malta is.
The ferry was a 20 minute journey and we were met on the other side by Norbert Francis Attard, an artist who makes installations, sculptures and videos and runs Gozo Contemporary, an international residency exchange programme, which enables artists to have studio and thinking space. Within 30 minutes we were having tea in his amazing home / studio – you wouldn’t expect anything less from an ex architect.
Ferry back was a time for reflection on what we had already seen and the whole Arrivals series. A really useful time for discussion and food for thought.
We get the taxi driver to drop us of at St John’s Co-Cathedral to quickly see Caravaggio’s largest painting the Beheading of St John the Baptist before lunch. Running slightly behind schedule we get Austin Camilleri to meet us at the restaurant for coffee. Prior to the visit we didn’t know much about his work as his website wasn’t working. He does paintings, and installations that combine sculpture, objects, video and photography. We watched on his portable DVD player, a video piece called Deposition.
Sometimes an hour doesn’t seem long enough, and we had to dash back to the British Council Offices to see Pierre Portelli, who studied Graphic Design at Swindon School of Art and Design. He creates installation works that incorporate a range of materials and that have religious connotations. A theme that appears in a lot of the artists work, but its clear to see why when there is a church on almost every corner. As Pierre was leaving he stopped and chatted to the next artist we were seeing Savio Deguara. Almost all the artists we met knew one another.
Savio studied in Italy and makes beautifully crafted sculpture that has something of the Art Povera about it.
We thanked Ingrid for her kind hospitality of the British Council and took the final artist Raphael Vella to a nearby café. Raphael had just left work. He lectures in contemporary art practice, theory and methodology at the University of Malta and we bombarded him with questions about the art scene.
He does seem to be an important member of Start group and has a lot of respect for the artists that we had seen. Start hasn’t done anything since 2005 and he is keen to get them all together very soon. He is just incredibly busy with teaching, and as we have gathered, these artists have to do everything themselves which takes commitment and dedication.
We make our way back to the hotel, our brains buzzing. It’s fascinating to see how artists operate within different infrastructure. We get a taxi back to the airport where we quickly manage to grab a cheesy puff – Maltese speciality. Very delicious and will probably go down very well at the launch event.
Allia, Miria, Fiona and Lucy