24 17 20 INTERVIEW REVIEW COMMENT The playful paradox of Female modernist artists see Konrad Buhagiar on art, SJ Fuerst’s hyperreal the light of day in Vienna politics, beauty and satire superwomen

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LISA GWEN BALDACCHINO €2.00 WHERE SOLD 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-to- ignore space, demanding some form of public engagement – positive or negative.” Opinion pg.11

ANN DINGLI The cuts endure, as does the unknown - Lucio Fontana, ‘Neon Structure for the Ninth Milan 1951/2019, Glass tube and neon, Recon Triennial’, struction authorised by Fondazione Lucio Fontana

he work of Lucio Fontana enjoys the same sensorial ac- knowledgement as T that of a song heard in passing that stops you short Sèvres Goliathus Scarabaeidae, Gilcée print on paper, by Magnus Gjoen Sèvres Goliathus Scarabaeidae, Gilcée print on paper, in your tracks and the melody of which unquestionably sparks NEWS: Tracy Emin at the White Cube DESIGN: The Bauhaus centenary and the grand tour of memory: you know it, but you’re Modernism OPINION: Women in art in Malta ART NEWS: Senegalese art makes a global splash not precisely clear about who it’s by, where you first encoun- BOOKS: The environment in comic form INTERVIEW: Ritty Tacsum’s mysterious world tered it or why you really, really REVIEW: Pierre Bonnard, colour and life ART NEWS: Mapplethorpe exhibition in Naples like it. >> Pg.44

#beinspired W Welcome / Team / Inside Mar – May –‘19

rt provides respite from the page 36); and Karen Grech discovers unique politics in portraiture (page 20) and Joanna Editor-in-Chief mundane. By choosing to step paintings by the forgotten female artists Delia uncovers how art history in Malta has Lily Agius into an exhibition, you enter active in Vienna during the first half of the historically favoured art by men (page 13). (+356) 9929 2488 someone else’s world – the twentieth century at The Lower Belvedere Let art and design take you on a journey, and Editor artist and curator’s – in which (until 19 May, page 17). Our Berlin we will see you again with another edition A you are compelled to feel correspondent Gabrielle Spiller writes about in June. If you would like to be involved in Margerita Pulè something that you can relate to, or even the impact of Bauhaus after its formation Artpaper you can contact us by email on Creative Director disagree with. Public art doesn’t require you 100 years ago (page 8); Sandro Debono falls [email protected]. Chris Psaila to make that choice, it is seen by all walks for Frank Gehry’s Louis Vuitton Foundation Assistant Designer of life, out in the open, and needs to engage museum building in Paris (page 22); and This issue is dedicated to our proof reader Nicholas Cutajar us all – but how? Inside this issue Lisa Gwen Christine Xuereb Seidu reports on the latest Judy Falzon. Baldacchino discusses public art in Malta scoop from Africa – specifically, ‘dynamic Sales Manager and its development and impact (page 11) Senegal’ (page 43). Lily Agius – a topic which will be explored again in (+356) 9929 2488 Artpaper’s next issue. Meanwhile, back in Malta, we interview Contributors photographic artist Ritty Tacsum ahead of Lisa Gwen Baldacchino In this issue, our writers bring you highlights, her solo show at Palazzo de la Salle (open Konrad Buhagiar exhibitions and events happening all around until 28 March, page 34); and the American Sandro Debono the world: Ann Dingli checks out the painter SJ Fuerst who lives in Gozo and Joanna Delia retrospective exhibition for Lucio Fontana is exhibiting at Lily Agius Gallery (until Ann Dingli at the Met Breuer in New York (open until 20 April, page 24). Professor Richard Richard England 14 April, page 44); George Eynaud explores England looks at the relationship between Judy Falzon the Pierre Bonnard retrospective at the Tate architecture and poetry (page 27), architect Karin Grech Bruce Micallef Eynaud Modern in London (running until 6 May, Konrad Buhagiar explores the idea behind George Micallef Eynaud Giulia Privitelli Gabriele Spiller Christine Xuereb Seidu Competition ART NEWS SPOTLIGHTS / EVENTS Artpaper is owned / by Bruce Eynaud produced by Lily Agius and 05. Tracy Emin at White Cube Bermondsey 05. Art Market Record year for Christie’s Chris Psaila [ V ] Publications 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 Go Figure! Can you guess any Supported by / Malta of the 3 artworks that make up AP Valletta 43. Senegal What’s hot in West Africa 33. International A selection of global art..e Gallery exhibitions this figure? Arthall Bee Wise Send your answers by email to 38. Mapplethorpe Exhibition Campari [email protected] by 31 March, with China Cultural Centre, Malta in Naples Eden Cinemas INTERVIEWS ‘Competition’ as the subject, for a chance to Edward Lowell Gabriel Caruana Foundation win: Heritage Malta 24. SJ Fuerst Realism meets Pop in Gozo Hublot Kite Group 34. Q&A Ritty Tacsum’s intimate photography First Prize: Lazuli Art Gallery BOOKS / ARCHITECTURE La Bottega Art Bistro A year-pass to LogoGrafixExpress 27. Poetry + Architecture A perfect all heritage Malta School of Art Malta Society of Arts REVIEWS relationship sites from Malta Tourism Authority Heritage Malta Manoel Theatre 47. No Man’s Land Cartoons for the . 17. City of Women Female Artists in Vienna MUZA environment People & Skin 36. Pierre Bonnard and the magic of colour Raymond Weil Second Prize: Risette €20 voucher Spazju Kreattiv 44. Lucio Fontana Retrospective at the Met Studio 87 from VeeGeeBee University of Malta Valletta Contemporary Art Shop Vamp Magazine Vee Gee Bee Art Shop COMMENT / OPINION Victor Pasmore Gallery

Supported by / International 11. Public Art The impact on urban Ashmolean Museum environment Bauhaus Archive Belvedere Museum 13. Feminism Women, Art + Malta Christies Fimbank 20. Politics When politics and art collide Louis Vuitton Foundation Louvre 22. Louis Vuitton Foundation A floating Madre Museo d’Arte Contemporanea masterpiece Met Breuer MoMA National Gallery Winners from previous issue:(1) Nicolas Van Patrick Norval Foundation Antonella Antonioni has won a Soho Radio DESIGN year-pass to all Heritage Malta Sotheby’s Taschen 08. Bauhaus 100th Anniversary celebrations sites and (2) Matthew Castillo Tate Britain has won a €20 voucher from Victoria and Albert Museum Vitra VeeGeeBee Art Shop White Cube Bermondsey

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No.6__ artpaper / 04 Art News / On the Scene Mar – May –‘19 03.19 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

ART NEWS OPINION SPOTLIGHT ART SALES DESIGN REVIEW / INTERVIEW BOOKS 03 Tracey Emin: A Fortnight of Tears Love her or hate her, Tracey Emin is back with an exhibition of neon, sculpture, 01 paintings, film, photography Louise Bourgeois’ Spider and drawing at White Cube Bermondsey, London. Tours Brazil Onlookers are pulled into One of the first arachnid sculptures Emin’s experience of tragic made by Louise Bourgeois has left life events - rape, abortion and bereavement. It seems that the artist is forever its home at the Museum of Modern fixated on her past and her art always reflects this, but there is no doubt that this Art in São Paulo, and is currently body of work deserves some of our time. You can’t help but sympathise with her, on a year-long tour of Brazil. The for exposing her deepest and most debilitating emotions. The art is a result of, colossal work, made during the or part of the reason for, these emotional events in her life, and there they are to 1990s, is being exhibited at vari- be seen - loud and clear! Tracey Emin: A Fortnight of Tears, is at White Cube ous cities around the country. The Bermondsey, London, until 7 April. 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 Inho- tim 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. 02 2018 Sees Record Sales for Christie’s Christie’s reported its best year ever for art sales in 2018, with overall sales to- talling €6.05 billion for the year (up from €5.8 billion in 2017). This comes part- ly 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 mil- lion; online-only sales also continued to drive the big- gest share of new buyers, with 41 percent of Christie’s first-time clients coming through online sales.

No.6__ artpaper / 05 Art News / Europe Mar – May –‘19

LONDON IRELAND

Food Research at the V&A A Very Different he Victoria & Albert Museum food conventions hinder the fight for a sustain- Coastline in London will host the inter- able lifestyle, and will develop ‘revolutionary disciplinary exhibition FOOD: table-manners’ to stop climate change and to Maltese artist Henry Falzon is currently Bigger than the Plate, which develop a sustainable future. collaborating with Sligo Tourism on a series of will explore current experi- intensely coloured Irish landscapes. His blog, T ments at every stage of the FOOD: Bigger than the Plate, co-curated by Viewing Sligo from the Outside In, combines tales food system, and how innovative individuals, Catherine Flood and May Rosenthal Sloan of his experiences along the rugged West Coast communities and organisations are radically will be on show at the V & A from 18 May of Ireland with his trusted sketchbook and draw- re-inventing how we grow, distribute and expe- until 20 October. ings from his travels. rience 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-fish- ing industry in Malta, will be creating four films for the exhibition entitled food | RULES | tomor- row. The project will research how everyday Table manners, Honey & Bunny, photo credit Stummerer Hablesreiter Akita Koeb

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, sprawl- ing roads, and commercialised coastlines Owere 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 Mediter- ranean summer.

Falzon toured much of Ireland, but was particularly drawn to the northern county of Sligo. In his words: “To a landscape art- ist, 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.sli- gotourism.ie/2018/11/20/viewing-sligo-from-the-outside-in and more Irish work can be seen on Henry’s website www.henryfalzon.com

No.6__ artpaper / 06 Art News / Europe Mar – May –‘19

PARIS Louvre: Celebrates Record- Breaking 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 videoApeshit , 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 This April, Gjoen shall be unveiling his latest what you’ve captured is the essence of Magnus interpretation of creative contrasts through a Gjoen’s creative vision. Through life and death, series of sculptural pieces created in collabo- strength and fragility, fine art and war, Gjoen ration with the Florentine studio, Baldi Home revels in the unusual space that is created by Jewels. opposing aesthetics. The 58th edition of the Salone del Mobile With Norwegian roots and a London upbringing, Milan runs from 9 to 14 April this year. For Gjoen’s distinct artistic style emerged from the more information log on to www.salonemila- fashion and design industries across Europe, no.it and www.magnusgjoenart.com while today, Gjoen’s works hang on the walls of Kate Moss’ London home.

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 shift- ed 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 art- ists working within digital or online contexts. During her residency Shtohryn re- searched 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 eco- nomic, 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

No.6__ artpaper / 07 Design / Bauhaus / Germany Mar – May –‘19 Highlights

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 Rammelsberg ore mine, © Tillmann Franzen

No.6__ artpaper / 08 GABRIELE SPILLER is a Swiss-German author and journalist who lives between Berlin and Gozo. She looks Design / Bauhaus / Germany forward to playing a part in promoting Malta’s emerging Mar – May –‘19 art scene.

GERMANY

o you know Bauhaus? Certainly, you may the Frankfurter Küche, the first fitted kitchen, was For Bauhaus enthusiasts, a Grand Tour of Modernism say. But a homogenous Bauhaus move- a Bauhaus feature designed by architect Margarete is recommended: a tour of significant buildings show- ment never actually existed. The Sta- Schütte-Lihotzky. She researched how her friends casing a hundred years of modern architecture. Some atliches Bauhaus (State Bauhaus), an worked in a kitchen, how they mixed cake batter and are impressive UNESCO World Heritage sites, while art school founded in Weimar in 1919 by how they placed a saucer on a shelf. This provided her others are single houses that can only be viewed from D architect Walter Gropius, soon became with the measurements and layout for the new stan- outside. Bauhaus town halls, an employment office, something closer to a school of design and moved to dard kitchen, which came to replace the free assem- municipal baths, observation towers, power plants, Dessau. bled kitchens that were more common until the 1920s. churches, and a crematory are all included in this tour. The Grand Tour also takes in the birthplace of the Bau- It then moved to – and closed in – Berlin as a private ed- Since the overall concept of Bauhaus was to create a haus in Weimar, the former Grand Ducal Saxon School ucation institute, all in just 14 years of experimenting Gesamtkunstwerk, that is, a total work of art, the stu- of Arts and Crafts, designed and later directed by Hen- in the free and applied arts, architecture, design and dents of the Bauhaus School practiced many diverse ry van der Velde and, of course, the iconic Bauhaus educational methods. Yet the impact of the Bauhaus disciplines, including photography, music, theatre and school building in Dessau-Rosslau, built in 1925/26 by was so strong that, for some, the term is synonymous even dance. They created graphic design and advertis- Gropius himself. Also nearby are the Masters’ Houses: with modernity, especially with regard to buildings. ing, for both themselves and for third parties. Indeed, the villa of the Gropius family and the semi-detached This year, the Grand Tour of Modernism, celebrating Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius was not only an inno- houses of Moholy-Nagy/Feininger, Muche/Schlemmer Bauhas’ 100th anniversary, will tell you all you need to vative architect, he was also an excellent salesman: the and Kandinsky/Klee. Surprisingly, these professors of know about the movement. ability to market new design products played a strong the Bauhaus lived as tenants in the houses they de- role in the Bauhaus’ success story. signed themselves: they were built by the city of Des- The Bauhaus was a creative school among many oth- sau. ers, which emerged after the devastating First World The Bauhaus aesthetic was stark and functional, thus War. It radically broke with the grandmotherly Belle the expression ‘form follows function’, but products Meanwhile, the Bauhaus Archiv/Museum für Ge- Epoque style: the Bauhaus crowd lived the revolution- often came in small numbers and were not cheap- staltung (the Bauhaus Archive/Museum of Design) ary reforms of the time and light and lightness were ly-priced. Despite the claim that everybody should in Berlin is due to re-open this autumn. It hosts the now on the agenda. The homely British Arts and Crafts be able to enjoy Bauhaus design, not everyone could world’s largest collection of material on the history Movement, the playful French Art Nouveau and its afford it. As a consequence, Bauhaus suffered during and influence of the Bauhaus. Albert Einstein’s wood- German counterpart Jugendstil had to quite literally the worldwide economic crisis of 1929 and was finally en summer-house in Caputh is another example of the leave the living-room. The Bauhaus masters and their closed in 1933. Bauhaus style, while in Alfeld (near Hannover), the students redesigned everything – from homes and fur- Fagus Factory is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and niture to lamps and carpets, kitchenware and toys. Fast-forward to 2019, and no less than to ‘rethink the an outstanding example of how the Bauhaus used cu- world’ is the motto that the German Bauhaus Associa- bic forms and constructed façades of metal and glass. Their aim was to design something decent and honest, tion 2019 has adopted for its multitude of events, ex- a product that would stand the test of time. Ideally, hibitions and communication projects. New Bauhaus More information on the Bauhaus centenary cel- you would only buy a teapot once in your life. Long museums are being built in Weimar, Dessau and Ber- ebrations can be found on www.grandtourofmod- before ‘sustainability’ was a buzz-word, the Bauhaus lin, while hundreds of activities are scheduled to take ernism.com and www.bauhaus100.com incorporated it into its developments. For example, place during the year.

“ A Grand Tour of Modernism is recommended; a tour of signif- icant buildings showcasing one hundred years of modern architec- ture.”

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

No.6__ artpaper / 09 Art News / USA / Malta Mar – May –‘19 Highlights

USA MALTA . Artworks from 1923 ZfinMalta – National Dance Company announces its 2nd in Public Domain 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 Following a successful world. premiere of public domain. The large amount of works includes literature, music, film Paolo Mangiola’s Voyager, ZfinMalta will and paintings, sculptures and photography, including Marcel Duchamp’s The now be taking its full-length creation to Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), Henri theatres around the Maltese islands. Matisse’s Odalisque With Raised Arms and Constantin Brancusi’s Bird in Space. 41 years ago, American astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan thought of The annual release of works sending a time capsule into outer space into the public domain was that would give intelligent life a snapshot stalled in 1998, when major of Earth’s diversity, sounds, feelings and entertainment corporations thoughts through 116 analog encoded advocated for, and won, longer images. A full Maltese team, including visual copyright protections, adding artist Austin Camilleri, composer Vero- 20 years to the copyright term. Launched on the Voyager Spacecrafts in nique Vella and designer Luke Azzopardi This meant that the body of 1977, the Golden Records, were expect- collaborated with Mangiola to create an work due to be released in ed to remain intelligible for more than a experience that propels its audience into 1999, and all subsequent years billion years. a world of introspection, self-discovery was effectively delayed until . and reflection on the way human beings 2019 and later. Fascinated by Sagan’s work, ZfinMa- are treating this fragile pale blue dot. lta’s artistic director and choreogra- Now, happily, works by M. C. pher Paolo Mangiola got wondering what Show dates: Escher, Pablo Picasso, Wassily NASA would send into outer space were St. Agatha Theatre – Rabat: 13 April Kandinsky, Max Ernst, Man it to repeat the same exercise today. Teatru Aurora – Gozo: 27 April Ray and many more are in the How would we represent our past, our Pjazza Teatru Rjal – Valletta: 3 May public domain. Pablo Picasso, The Pan Pipes (1923) present, and our hopes for the future? Tickets: www.zfinmalta.org/voyager

COMIC BRUCE MICALLEF EYNAUD He’s into Cubism

No.6__ artpaper / 10 LISA GWEN BALDACCHINO holds a first degree in History of Art and a Masters in Cul- tural Heritage Management. Opinion /Public Art / Malta She is a freelance curator and writer for art and design Mar – May –‘19 events.

MALTA

LISA GWEN BALDACCHINO FOR PUBLIC ART’S SAKE “Art is language and public art is public speech.” Jonathan Jones, The Guardian

alking into Spaz- Which is why PTR’s public art pro- ju Kreattiv a few gramme, launched in 2014, was so days ago, two praiseworthy: for the temporality of hanging plates the artworks, the variety of subjects caught my atten- addressed through different media, the tion. I immediate- social comment, the high audience en- lyW recognised the suspended crockery gagement factor, and the altered contex- as a ‘comment piece’ by Victor Agius, tual dynamic which each piece provided created following the contentious re- to the space in which it sat. Agius’s Ka- moval of his temporary public artwork pitell was the penultimate to be shown; from Pjazza Teatru Rjal (PTR), a few shortly after this incident, PTR’s pub- years back. lic art programme was scrapped. It re- mains one of the most successful efforts One plate carried an image of the art- towards proper discourse and engage- work titled Kapitell - a stone and mesh- ment with public art in Malta to date. Kapitell, 2015, Victor Agius. Photo by Elisa Von Brockdorff wire piece that was precariously plugged the scheme launched by the Gozo Min- ingly phallic, ceramic sculpture. Vella atop one of the remaining standing col- Perhaps this was the original intention istry within the ecoGozo 2010-2012 Ac- Critien’s Mother and Child possesses umns of PTR - a powerful and symbol- behind Valletta 2018’s Hekk Jghid il- tion Plan. As many as thirteen works of similar proportions and height to his ic representation of the site’s history, Malti, which saw thirteen temporary art were commissioned, with each proj- Luqa monument; its aesthetic and loca- while on the other, the following quote artworks, representing Maltese prov- ect successfully carried to completion; tion are equally questionable. Although was reproduced: “It would be better if erbs installed around the capital city. On each a distinct component within its re- I stand to be corrected, I couldn’t trace your experiments in contemporary pub- paper, this could have been a fabulous spective environment. a call for this particular monument, nor lic art, weren’t shown in public spaces, project, which addressed public art, as any media coverage justifying the choice but in an appropriate museum, so that well as language and intangible heritage Similar programmes have been launched of the artist or the public expense, and we don’t risk shocking or scaring people through visual means. Unfortunately, in Malta. In 2015, two Ministries, sup- neither could Gzira Local Council shed . away from modern art” (translated from the poor design of the pieces, as well ported by Arts Council Malta and MUZA any light on the matter, rather request- Maltese). The author of this comment as the literal interpretations, and the (Heritage Malta), invited interested art- ing the undersigned to provide them was not named; however, the reasoning choice of material (polystyrene), did ists to submit proposals for Art in Public with information instead. seems to have been given as justifica- not add to the project. Spaces – the programme was meant to tion for the removal of his piece; flawed span three years, culminating and end- Lastly, I cannot omit a comment on Cas- though it may be, as well as defeatist The pieces were only removed from Val- ing in 2018. To date, three of these have tille Place: which has today become a of the very notion of what constitutes letta a couple of weeks ago, most hav- been realised, and work is underway on fragmented ‘gathering’ of public sculp- public art and the space(s) in which it ing suffered terrible damage across the two others; Matthew Pandolfino’sDgha - tures and monuments – all within close . should sit, inhabit or even the contexts seasons. However, the media recently jsa tar-Rih for Dock No. 1, and Hagar- proximity of each other. Three figura- with which it should interact. reported that the works are being dis- na by Victor Agius, to be placed near tive monuments dedicated to ex-Prime . tributed in different localities across the Ggantija in Gozo. Adrian Abela’s Misrah Ministers Dom Mintoff and Gorg Borg Isn’t that the sheer beauty of public country, despite their poor condition. il-Kliem Mistur, to be placed in Ghar Oliver, and philosopher Manwel Dimech, art? It’s a ‘phenomenon’, whereby an And this is the aspect which I struggle Lapsi, should be completed ‘later this are fiercely juxtaposed with theKnot artwork or monument, irrespective of with most; the so-called inherent proj- year’. Yet, hope is the last to die, and sculpture commemorating the Valletta size, shape or colour, is placed in a (gen- ect legacy vis-à-vis the choice to com- possibly the next series of projects – the Summit on Migration in 2016, and by erally) strategic hard-to-ignore space, mission works in such a weak material. second phase of this programme was the Eternal Flame commemorating the demanding some form of public engage- The intention, the purpose of a project, launched a few weeks back - will trans- Maltese who fought for emancipation. ment – positive or negative. Contempo- is key. To quote Prof. Pavel Buchler late into remarkable artworks, which rary public art seems to attract much of (Manchester School of Art), “Public art challenge public perception, as much as It is a hotchpotch of unrelated mon- the latter, simply because of the visual can be static, moving, part of the infra- the spaces for which they are designed. uments that each speak a different language used by contemporary artists structure or a projection of light and tongue; they stand in painful contrast, – a language which fiercely departs from sound. It can last for a minute, a day, a Yet not all public art follows calls for almost littering the square that once the predominantly Neo-Baroque style year or a lifetime.” It’s still not clear just proposals, or a competition. This seems bore a luscious green roundabout, full we are collectively accustomed to being what the intention of this project was. to be the case with a figurative sculpture of mature trees. The trees have disap- presented with. In fact, the figurative placed on the Kappara roundabout last peared, supposedly in the name of prog- busts, the full-length figures, and com- Yet there have been a number of suc- November. After much digging, it trans- ress. And what the public has been left memorative statues, outweigh the ab- cessful efforts towards introducing per- pired that the piece, Mother and Child, with a space which hardly caters to pub- stracted, conceptual and contemporary manent contemporary public artworks was made by Paul Vella Critien, the lic need, nor is representative of public artworks in our midst. in Malta and Gozo. Perhaps the most creator of the notorious Colonna Med- interest. successful programme to date remains iterranea – an abstracted, yet seem-

No.6__ artpaper / 11 Spotlight /Africa / Budapest Mar – May –‘19 Highlights

AFRICA

Ibrahim Mahama installation in South Africa

Ibrahim Mahama, known in Malta for his 2018 installa- tion A Straight Line Through the Carcass of His- tory, 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 pro- cess-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

No.6__ Artpaper / 12 JOANNA DELIA is a medical doctor who spe- cialises in cosmetic medicine. She is also a cultural con- Opinion / Feminism / Malta sumer and art collector who tirelessly supports local con- Mar – May –‘19 temporary art and culture.

CULTURE

JOANNA DELIA The abominable ‘female’ artist and her issues

Let’s face it: no woman a while. Women are not absent from key wants to be called ‘fe- positions in institutions such as the Arts male’ this and ‘female’ Council of Malta and most private art that. We want to be spaces in Malta are run by women. seen as what we are . without any gender ref- And yet, at the newly inaugurated MUZA erencesL and connotations. Obviously. in Valletta, of the hundreds of works on We consider the simple mention of our display, only seven are by women. Seven gender before our profession to be in- works out of a collection of thousands! sulting. But the figures beckon. Some I know that many more works by wom- statistics in themselves are insulting – en are part of the national collection, . and prevalent across the board. so why aren’t they on show? MUZA is a national-community art museum, boast- In Maltese politics, for instance, the pro- ing open, non-linear curation and a wel- portion of female politicians is set at be- coming ethos, however its collection is a tween eight and 10 percent and has not historical one, and it cannot rewrite art budged for the last 60 years and other history overnight. sectors, such as my own – medicine – fare no better. According to a 2018 re- Teresa Sciberras, a prolific artist who port by the Freelands Foundation, few- trained in Scotland and Italy before er than 30 per cent of artists represented completing her MFA at the University of by major commercial galleries in London Malta, remembers: “When, in 2017, the are women, with only five percent of gal- artist line-up for the Malta Pavilion was leries representing an equal number of announced, I couldn’t help but notice male and female artists. that from the local artists, I was the only woman. The other three women art- Tate Modern director Frances Morris ists who participated in the exhibition curated landmark major retrospectives were from the Maltese diaspora. The of women artists including Louise Bour- female co-curator, Bettina Hutschek, is geois (in 2007), Yayoi Kusama (in 2012) German. Coincidence? Maybe, but defi- and Agnes Martin (in 2015) before her nitely one that gives pause for thought. present appointment. Does it take a “ For most of history, I’m 100 percent sure that this was not woman to organise exhibitions of female due to prejudice on the part of the cura- artists’ work? Do most male curators tors, so then what was it? Why is there still naively – or deliberately – ignore fe- Anonymous was such a stark and obvious discrepancy?’ male artists as they have done since the cinquecento? Why are there so few works by female a woman.” artists on display and in permanent col- Rome’s Palazzo Braschi and the Museo lections? Why do female artists find few- del Prado in Madrid recently held major Virginia Woolf er gallerists to represent them? Why are solo shows of Artemesia Gentileschi and retrospectives of female artists so much Flemish Baroque prodigy Clara Peeters less prevalent than those held for male respectively, whose work is selling with artists? million-dollar price-tags: a few female drops in a sea of male artists. Does this discrimination begin at school? Chelsea College of Arts graduate Chiara Lately, it seems that, in the art world, Cassar thinks not. “I actually think that women’s voices are heard more loud- art school is a huge safety blanket and ly in the Middle East. Last December, creates a ‘deer in the headlights’ type ef- The Art Newspaper claimed that the art fect because you have so much time to ecosystem in the Gulf is dominated by focus on your art practice, that you for- women. Royal patrons, expatriates and get about the future struggle you will be home-grown professionals are leading faced with when you leave art school.’ cornerstone institutions and driving the art market in that part of the world. So, Her contemporary, Maxine Attard, says: what is the situation in Malta? “But, as in all parts of the world, girls and women are put in second place to Female students studying art outnum- men and forcefully – or softly – groomed ber male students at the University of to fit into a female stereotype. In my

Malta and at MCAST, and have done for Latitude 36, Charlie Cauchi, installation view education in Malta, I was never told I >>

No.6__ Artpaper / 13 Muza adv - Eng 375x245.indd 1 27/02/2019 10:42 AM Opinion / Feminism / Malta Mar – May –‘19

CULTURE

on the back from the older, established must shed something of these like bal- generation of male artists; they engage last from a sinking air balloon, in order in the competitive bravado of who’s the to emerge and join the establishment.” best new kid on the block”, says Teresa Sciberras. Roxman Gatt says: “I would Will the gaps shrink if we shine more be naive to think that gender disparity light on female artists: consciously, in the art world no longer exists. Wom- frankly and discriminatorily? Is there en are still tragically under-represented something wrong with intentionally in the art world and commercial gallery balancing out gender presence and rep- sector and the pay gap still persists in resentation in the art world, especially universities and other large institu- when there are more artists graduating tions.” So, what do we do? from the gender that is so grossly un- der-represented? Will unofficially des- First, we must identify the reasons for ignated quotas affect the respect these these statistical gaps. But, as Teresa Sci- artists deserve in their own right, as berras says: “I don’t yet know what ex- quota-assignment has done in other ar- actly this gap is, much less how we can eas? escape it. Can we build a bridge over it? Is it a gap that – in order not to fall into I suppose we should not be having this it – a woman must give up something of conversation. We certainly should not Not in use, Chiara Cassar, 2018 themselves: the possibility of love, per- have to have this conversation - but we could not do something because of my not reflected in my work at all. This is haps, or a relationship, or having chil- must! gender. I always felt that I was seen as another issue that women artists have dren? Maybe, in order to be an artist we someone special because I was a woman to face. Women tend to be asked if their and wanted to be a serious artist. I nev- work is autobiographical. Male artists er experienced such comments or felt are never asked such questions.” such perceptions during my studies in the UK.” Is the absence of work by female artists in shows and museums linked to collec- And why do female art school graduates tors and their gender? In a Huff post ar- exhibit less in the first five years after ticle, Malcolm Harris comments: “Unlike graduating than their male counter- their boisterous and boastful male coun- parts? Are they as prolific? Or is it just terparts, most female collectors are very a matter of their work not being includ- discreet in their purchasing habits and ed in exhibitions? London-based, Royal rarely make public announcements College of Arts graduate Roxman Gatt about the works or artists they are col- tells me: “In my view, all women are pro- lecting.” Perhaps it is the humility factor lific; they have had to work way harder once again that is keeping women back. than men and continue to do the same work, but what they achieve is beyond There’s also the factor of female artists exceptional. The weight that the work simply being less known than their male carries is very visible: you can see the counterparts. Although the Art+Femi- struggle, the passion – the transparency. nism movement has seen more informa- It took many strong women to help us tion about female artists than ever be- pave the way to an easier place, but the fore uploaded onto the public domain, battle is still on-going and SHE will still there is still a long way to go in this area. Circumscribed 1, Teresa Sciberras, 2015 be thrown obstacles and belittled and si- lenced; however, SHE is born a hustler “Give me your opinion”, I said to several and will always be one.” artists. “I want to get the gist of how you feel.” How many more centuries of un- But why do collectors buy less art from fair bias in the art world do we have to female artists? Is it because their art is endure before we start questioning the ‘female’ or ‘girly’? Is it because it ex- relevance of this bias? “I don’t feel any- plores – or is perceived to explore – ‘fe- thing about it that makes real sense”, male issues’ or issues with the ‘female some said. “I shouldn’t have to have an identity’? Female art? The work of the opinion and, anyway, my opinion doesn’t late Isabelle Borg, for example – a pi- matter much because there is no ratio- oneer and heroine of the modernist nal reason and no explanation for these movement in Malta – certainly does not statistics” they said. And I agree. Sexism subscribe to the description ‘female art’. is irrational by definition.

On the other hand, artist and film-mak- “The thing that niggles most here, how- er Charlie Cauchi says: ‘My work is all ever, is that over the last few years – me... so I suppose I do approach things with a few notable exceptions – those from a female standpoint. I do deal with who seem to make it out of that sticky, very personal material.” But Maxine endless ‘emerging’ tunnel seem to be Attard believes that: ‘No, my gender is the boys. They are greeted with slaps Pain[ting], Roxman Gatt, 2018

No.6__ Artpaper / 15

KARIN GRECH is an Austri- an-born teacher of English and a part-time sculptor with a passion for art and art history. Review / Exhibition / Vienna She lives in Gozo and travels regularly to art shows and exhi- Mar – May –‘19 bitions around Europe.

VIENNA

KAREN GRECH City of Women The work of 56 female artists sees the light of day

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 achievementsI 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.

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 concen- tration 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 Mod- ernism, 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 fe- male 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 guid- ed 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 Atmo- spheric 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 pro- vincial 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 ar- tistic 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. Follow Karin Grech on her blog about art and exhibitions called Bee Wise www.bwiseaftertheevent.wixsite. Wise Bee called exhibitions and art about her blog on Grech Karin Follow com/aftertheevent/blog and facebook/bwiseaftertheevent Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Adolescentia, 1903 © Belvedere, Vienna >>

No.6__ artpaper / 17 Review / Exhibition / Vienna Mar – May –‘19 Highlights

VIENNA

to national collections taking an interest and acquiring as a military painter for the Austro-Hungarian War the works of these artists. Office. The exhibition contains her rather striking, yet confusingly-titled Portrait of a (male) Soldier - Another one of the founding ‘eight’ artists was the Self-portrait amongst other expressive and emotive Russian born Jewish sculptor and painter Teresa Fe- works. odorowna-Ries, who was working in Vienna at the be- ginning of the 20th century. In fact, it is her remarkable Many other works also clearly show the influences of sculpture titled Witch doing her Toilette on Walpur- the era and its history. One particularly poignant ex- gis Night that greets the visitor on entering the exhi- ample is the haunting painting titled Interrogation II bition space. Unsurprisingly, this white marble sculp- by Bauhaus-educated Friedl Dicker-Brandeis. She left ture, which shows a nude woman cutting her toe nails, us a legacy not only in her oeuvre but also in the art caused a scandal when it was first exhibited in 1896. education she gave to Jewish children while teach- Yet despite - or possibly because of - her provocative ing them during their (and her) imprisonment in the There are also a few bold and expressive enamel paint- work, Feodorowna-Ries became a successful artist. ‘model ghetto’ Terezin. ings and two examples of faience maquettes. The lat- ter, two ceramic bas-reliefs by Elena Luksch-Makows- Tina Blau, a landscapist, was another success story. The biographies of these artists do tell us about their ky, were the models for a dynamic architectural relief She was a co-founder and teacher at Vienna’s first art achievements, where they exhibited, which associ- that graced the facade of the Bürgertheater in Vienna academy for women and contributed considerably ations they founded or belonged to and where they until the building was demolished in 1960. to the development of a style of Austrian landscape taught. But they often also contain references to who painting called ‘Atmospheric Impressionism”. Curi- their fathers, brothers or husbands were. While that Another documented commission is the work of Eug- ously, one of her key works, Spring in the Prater, was might be of interest from a purely biographical point of enie Breithut-Munk, who painted allegorical murals at initially rejected by the organisers of an international view, I will welcome the day when a woman artist will the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna that to this day event at the Vienna Künstlerhaus in 1882 for ‘exces- be defined purely by her work. adorn the walls of the building. Breithut-Munk was a sive brightness’; yet, it was later included and eventu- member of the very active group Eight Women Artists ally acquired by the Imperial Picture Gallery. City of Women: Female Artists in Vienna from 1900 that served as a platform for female artists at the time. to 1938 is on show at The Lower Belvedere in Vien- The group held successful exhibitions in one of fin- Stephanie Hollenstein served in the First World War na until 19 May. de-siècle Vienna’s most important galleries. This led disguised as a male soldier, and once exposed, served

ARCHITECTURE Rebrand and evolution for Valletta architectural practice

a series of projects, including the Bar- rakka Lift, the regeneration of City Gate and the new Parliament building – in collaboration with Renzo Piano Building Workshop, as well as the on- going new museum at St John’s Co-Ca- thedral 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 cre- ative cluster bringing architecture and 3D printed AP’s prototype of Instant Domestic Enclosure. design, food and digital fabrication to- Credit AP Valletta gether, 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 in-

St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral St. Paul’s novation in the context of Valletta as a creative city. Currently, AP Valletta, Late last year, the architecture and de- the city of Valletta and has continued fablabvalletta and the Mediterranean sign practice Architecture Project was to have considerable influence on con- Culinary Academy form part of this formally renamed ‘AP Valletta’. temporary architecture in Malta. growing community. Since its founding in 1991, the practice AP Valletta has renewed and developed www.apvalletta.eu Ro-Botanicals machine at fablabvalletta, Science in the has always been strongly linked with much of the city’s architecture through City, Valletta, 2018

No.6__ artpaper / 18 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 Jeff Koons, Balloon Venus (Magenta) © Jeff Koons, 5 unique versions (Magenta, Red, Violet, Edition of 3 2010–2015 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

ast week, in London, I visited mantle, trimmed with a luxurious fur collar, and has a document that charts the subconscious. The rela- the National Gallery to see a fas- a gold chain around his neck. In one hand he holds a tionship between man and his physical, social and po- cinating exhibition of portraits crucifix, and in the other a sculpture of the Ephesian litical environment is embedded in it. The portraitist by Lorenzo Lotto, one of the Diana. is not only a poet imitating and recomposing Nature, greatest portraitists of the Ital- but has also taken on the role of political and social ian Renaissance. He depicted In my lectures on fragments and the cult of ruins, I commentator. Lmen and women sitting alone or in compositions of have often used this portrait as a prelude and intro- two or three, and equipped his paintings with a rich duction to the Modernist invention of abstraction. Mi- Shelley wrote that “the most unfailing herald, com- symbolism that imbues them with a compelling psy- chelangelo was at the centre of this milestone in west- panion and follower of the awakening of a great peo- chological depth. ern art history, symbolised by the myth of the Torso ple to work a beneficial change in opinion or institu- of the Belvedere. He is undeniably the artist who best tion, is poetry.” I remember reading Marilyn Butler’s Lotto’s sitters, among them clerics, merchants and expressed the marriage of Neo-platonic thought and Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries about English humanists, are often surrounded by objects which, Christian doctrine that is represented in this painting. Literature around the time of the French Revolution. together with the attire and jewellery of his sitters, But with Lotto – for whom Odoni is the personifica- It blew me away with its intricate description of the hint at the status, interests and aspirations of his tion of the cultured milieu of merchants and bankers relationships between English writers, critics, editors subjects, adding social and political meaning to each who spearheaded the spread of Humanism – modern and journalists who were “peculiarly political”. work. At the centre of his rather melancholic social psychology was born. commentary is the Portrait of Andrea Odoni: a rich Who would have thought that the sublime descrip- merchant and collector of paintings, sculpture and From Lotto onwards, all the way to Expressionism, to tions of the elements and the moody landscapes in antique vases, as well as curiosities such as petrified Meidner’s Ich und die Stadt and beyond, the portrait Shelley’s beautiful verse were more than a metaphor serpents and rare shells. He wears a rich and dark became more than a mere record of a likeness. It is for the individual soul and concealed a precise politi-

No.6__ artpaper / 20 KONRAD BUHAGIAR is a founding partner of Architecture Project and has been responsible for numerous restoration and rehabilita- tion 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 Adviso- Opinion / Politics / Portraiture ry Committee and the Valletta Rehabilitation Committee. Konrad is also the chief editor behind our A Printed Thing and Founding Mar – May –‘19 Myths of Architecture publications.

ART

cal message aimed at the renewal of a staid society? No The art of Sebastian Tanti Burlò has its seed in this tra- They are divining new ways of raising that all-import- poet of the Romantic period, even the most apparently dition. His work in local newspapers is an expressive ant, high-as-can-be number in the bank which, they apolitical like Keats, spared any political effort. The and satirical take on both the underhand – and very erroneously believe, can make up for all that unhappi- Romantics’ favourite theme of the bloom of individual public – goings-on of a tiny post-colonial, post-modern ness and loss. It can buy a pair of Fendi sunglasses and consciousness in the face of a destructive natural cos- population that has clumsily been trading its authentic a Ralph Lauren polo shirt and silk Yves Saint Laurent mos was none other than a Liberal clarion call for the catholic-community values for a deterministic, com- ties, brands that crowd their portraits like the objects The Politics of Art masses. mercial drive for material wealth. Its spiritual savings that populate Lotto’s canvases. Unlike Lotto’s human- have been withdrawn from the nation’s coffers, Sebas- istic melancholy, though, the bright colours and rich Young writers such as Hunt, Keats, Shelley, Scott and tian seems to say, to be converted into a new currency attire here conceal a deep-rooted sadness. It is a kind Peacock consolidated the role of the poet in society consisting of the numbers of bedrooms and square me- of Vanitas because if loss and pain are an inevitable as a chronicler and revolutionary, a tradition that ex- tres of total ugliness. part of life, the artist seems to be telling us, we need to tends all the way, in recent times, to Lennon, Cohen find more lasting and sustainable forms of redemption. and Dylan. Art and politics may seem like strange bed- His new body of work consists of a series of large can- fellows, but nowhere do the two embrace more inti- vases, portraits which, true to the axiom that archi- Portrait of Andrea Odoni by Lorenzo Lotto is in the mately than in the cartoon, a genre that blossomed as tecture is the mirror of the soul of a nation, represent Royal Collection of the United Kingdom and was the winds of change swept across Europe following the the human equivalent of the current urban landscape. exhibited at the National Gallery in London earlier French Revolution. Here is a group of stereotypical members of the com- this year. The Last Dinner by Seb Tanti Burlò, will munity that he depicts, critically but affectionately; be on show at Risette, 81 Old Theatre Street, Vallet- In the middle of the 19th century, Punch magazine in- Sausage People he calls them, gathered around the ta, until 30 April. augurated a new period where satire, caricature and table, like a ship of fools, to console themselves about humour, contained in images describing the political the loss of looks and love, of friends and taste and climate of the moment, insinuated their way into our dreams and all the beautiful things of life. lives and became a daily presence, influential and pow- erful enough to put in motion an engagement as tragic as the Charlie Hebdo massacre. “ 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.

No.6__ artpaper / 21 SANDRO DEBONO is a curator, academic and museum professional based in Malta. He is specialised in heritage policy and collections de- velopment, and has published extensively on art Opinion / Museum / Paris history and culture studies.. Sandro is currently the project lead for MUZA, the Malta national- Mar – May –‘19 community art museum.Highlights

PARIS

SANDRO DEBONO In Conquest of Culture Setting sail with Frank Gehry’s Louis Vuitton Foundation

ost of my trav- real time. The teams also made use of els are mo- software originally developed for the tivated by a aviation industry to construct the mu- search for the seum. latest exhibi- tion project to The structure is conceived in con- discover and trasting forms; monumentality on one M explore, and hand and more intimate passageways my latest journey to Paris was no ex- between zones on the other. The inte- ception. The major retrospective ded- riors unfold to reveal bridged spaces, icated to Jean Michel Basquiat, the staircases and passageways with views highly influential artist who died at the of the levels beneath. Internal struc- tender age of 27, brought together well tures are kept bare and true to their over 100 of his works, some of which function. The bowels of this intricate have never before been exhibited in structure are connected to a central- public. This time though, more than ly-located main foyer from which vis- the exhibition itself, the venue of the itors can access the exhibition halls Fondation Louis Vuitton proved to be set on a number of floors. The interior a revelation to me. This is definitely is lit by the diffused light seeping in not just another white cube exhibition through the dominant sails and stra- space. It is a living structure, afloat tegically located shafts which soften and in motion, while standing solemn- the relationship between interior and ly and firmly in its setting. Entering the exterior. Monumentality is key and is invested with a sense of latent move- ings of the Jardin d’Acclimatation in building feels very much like boarding a the interconnecting exhibition spaces ment, seemingly light and afloat in spite which it finds itself. Planning restric- vessel, setting sail into the future. are conceived to host multiple projects of its overwhelming scale, particularly tions did hold some sway over the proj- concurrently. Not one hall is the same when seen from the approaches to the ect; the structure had to be built within Designed by American architect Frank size. Some have extremely high ceilings Bois de Boulogne on the western edge the square footage and the two-storey Gehry, the Fondation Louis Vuitton is akin to temples or sacred spaces. Oth- of Paris. This is Gehry’s aesthetic, with volume of a bowling alley, and any- testimony to the achievements of mod- ers have the look and feel of a tradition- an architectural language of folding, thing higher was to be made of glass. ern design and technology. Gehry’s al art gallery. The space is minimalist undulating mass and form akin to the Gehry’s building seemingly sheds these building - made of glass and fibre-re- at best and does not distract from the Guggenheim in Bilbao and the Museum restrictions and succeeds in making a inforced concrete known as ductal - focus and centrality of the work dis- of Pop Culture in Seattle. Glass - held bold statement beyond any perceived floats on a bed of shallow water with a played within. in place by a majestic cobweb of metal restriction in height and footprint. stepped cascade in front. True to Geh- and bespoke ply wood beams - is the ry’s intention of creating for Paris ‘a In fifty years, this iconic building will glory of Gehry’s design. With its unique structure and daring magnificent vessel symbolising the cul- be given to the civic authorities of the design, the project registered thirty tural calling of France’, the structure is city. Come what may, the beauty of this In conceiving the museum building, patents in total, covering construc- decked with curved glass roofing made monumental structure will be a sight to Gehry undoubtedly sought inspiration tion methodology, materials and tech- out of over 3,600 purposely produced behold for years to come. from its surrounding cultural land- niques. Multidisciplinary teams worked panels curved to the nearest millimetre scape. The spaceship-like structure on a 3D digital model in order to solve to mimic wind-filled sails. The building connects and blends with the surround- technical issues concurrently and in

2 0 1 , M E R C H A N T S T R E E T , V A L L E T TA

No.6__ artpaper / 22 Not just a pretty face. These kitchens mean business.

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PAINTING

MARGERITA PULÈ A Playful Paradox A unique blend of pop sensibility and painterly realism

Oil on Floppy disks, 2019, SJ Fuerst

woman sits on an oversized toys become symbols and women – above all – are in And what seems on the surface to be a decorative or director’s chair, surrounded control. fanciful image, on closer inspection proves to contain by an inflatable tiger and a many contradictions. Firstly, Fuerst’s women are sexy, herd of blow-up pigs. She SJ Fuerst lives and works in Gozo, combining her sometimes underdressed, but they are never anon- looks straight at us; her look contemporary and classical art training to create ymous and are definitely not passive. Art-lovers will is challenging, commanding these magical, paradoxical worlds: hyper-real from be familiar with the claim of the male gaze, creating even. Another, wearing a a distance but soft and delicate up close. She stud- a world to be seen through male eyes only. Fuerst’s A swimsuit that gives her the ied in New York, Florence and London and has now women negate this; they are sexy, yes, but they do torso (and testicles) of Michelangelo’s David looks chosen the Gozitan light and island peace as a base not exist for men – they are looking right back at us. straight ahead, barely tolerating the cardboard bib- from where to work and create these magically real lical figures that surround her. There is nothing co- paintings. Another paradox in Fuerst’s work is the juxtaposition quettish here. Their more demure sisters are engaged of elements of the natural world and the almost trash- in perhaps more modest tasks: one herds an inflatable Fuerst builds these worlds – sometimes taking a few ily fake objects that mimic it. Sateen jellyfish, syn- sheep, another takes a blow-up Godzilla for a walk, years to do so – by assembling inflatable animals, co- thetic bunnies and latex mermaids claim their place yet another is caught guiltily taking a bite out of an loured backdrops, costumes and models to create a in front of equally fake painted backdrops of heavenly inflatable doughnut. self-sufficient universe. The world is built around the skies or idyllic bowers. female figure – she is queen of her kingdom: the in- This is the world of SJ Fuerst: a world where mass-pro- flatables, the costumes and the props all exist within Fuerst herself is not straightforward. Of course, she is duced becomes beautiful, artificial becomes natural, her orbit. sparkly, young and gushingly positive, with an infec-

No.6__ artpaper / 24 MARGERITA PULÈ is an artist and writer with a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts. Her practice and S Interview / Exhibition / Malta research are concerned with the contradictions of Mar – May –‘19 politics and social realities.

tious enthusiasm. But her smiles hide a seri- ous 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, se- lecting the props, printing the backdrop, even stretching and preparing the canvas – she re- veals her artist’s mind that is utterly focused on the task in hand.

She laughs as she describes her inflatable an- imal 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 grace- fully, 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 con- trasts 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 par- adox. 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, represent- ing her transformation into a tree, following Apollo’s advances. The work refers to a clas- sical 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 opti- mistic with a great sense of humour, but defi- nitely 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 head- piece – made by Fuerst herself – standing in an un- derwater 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 dubi- ously 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 surround- ing her.

This, I think, is SJ Fuerst: carefree but deadly se- rious, 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 can- vas 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, Mal- ta. For more information email info@lilyagius- Circe from Homer’s Odyssey, SJ Fuerst Magic Rabbit, SJ Fuerst gallery.com and see www.lilyagiusgallery.com.

No.6__ artpaper / 26 RICHARD ENGLAND is an architect, poet, artist and the author of several books on art and architec- Opinion / Architecture + Poetry ture. His buildings have earned him numerous Inter- Mar – May –‘19 national prizes and awards.

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 spiritual, where we know the price of everything and of painting, sculpture and literature, poetry forever In attempting to establish a relationship between ar- the value of nothing and all is measured in monetary retains its author’s authenticity – untouched and un- chitecture and poetry, it seems appropriate to first terms, architecture has become a commercial, self-in- tainted. of all investigate the origins and meanings of the two dulgent, stylistic brand focused solely on novelty, ap- respective disciplines: architecture from the Greek pearance and monetary profit. Architects today must Architecture and poetry – the human response arkhitekton, arkhi (master) and tekton (building) and still remember that the ultimate scope of architecture Architecture as outlined in Juhani Pallasmaa’s publica- poetry from the Greek poieses (to make). is to serve people, accommodate their needs and ele- tion The Eyes of the Skin is engaged by all the human vate their spirit. senses, while poetry is experienced visually and aural- From the etymology of the words it is clear that the ly. As an architect who writes poetry, I am particularly two disciplines are involved in a process of making Remedies and redemption interested in the way words occupy the space on the and building, ie creating. However, the materials and Architecture today needs redemption in order to once page in a form of visual geometry; perhaps due to an methodologies employed are different: building mate- again nourish human existence. There are architects, early penchant for Concrete Poetry. Poetry is about rials for architecture and words for poetry. Yet, both however, who in both their works and writings, still the phenomenology of the experiences transmitted by share the aim of enchanting and elevating the human strive for enchantment and poetry. Emilio Ambasz the poet through the precise structure and rhythm of spirit. Architecture and poetry also share the qual- the poem and the poet’s expressive imagination. Ar- ities of precision, metrics, structure and rhythm as chitecture is also more about phenomenology: how essential constituents in both their creative process space is experienced and how a building can tran- and manifestation. Also common to both is the play of scend its physical dimensions and measurable limits contrasting opposites: solid and void in architecture, to the immeasurable. Both require craftsmanship and sound and silence in poetry. skill in the making and both are disciplines concerned with the manifestation of an imagined idea into reality. Poetry The essence of both architecture and poetry is not so Poetry, not unlike architecture, is also about building: much about what the building or the poem is about, building with words and sculpting with sound. It is but what emotional effect the edifice or poem can have about the taste of words and the intermittent voids on users and readers. and silences of the pauses, a crossover between sound and silence. One reads not only what is written, but Reciprocal inspiration also that which is not written: the words between the Both poetry and architecture, as stated before, rely on lines and the invisible words too; the heard and the “Architects today must still remember precision: the former in harmony with number, the lat- unheard, the said and the unsaid. ter in harmony with measure. Metrics and measure are It is how musical and meaningful the poet can make that the ultimate scope of architecture common to both. It was Thomas Hardy who said “poet- these passages that elevates his or her work from the is to serve people, accommodate their ry is emotion put into measure”. Poetry and architec- realm of prose to that of poetry, in the same way that ture can also serve as reciprocal inspirational sources. an architect can make a building lift the spirit and en- needs and elevate their spirit.” Great poetry has been inspired by architecture, as for chant its users. The true poet casts a web of magic example, in the works of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Har- that has the capacity to carry the reader away, just as reminds us that “architecture is giving poetry to the dy and Eliot, and architects have also used poetry as a the true architect caps into his building human emo- pragmatic”, as does Tao Ho, who emphasises that “ar- source for their inspiration. tions in order to lift up the hearts of its users. chitecture must still elevate our spirit”. Luis Barragan, perhaps the 20th century’s most poetic architect, al- Conclusion Architecture ways strove for “beauty and emotion” in his work. This While the relationship between architecture and po- The earliest definition of architecture, ‘Firmitas, Util- quest for enchantment in architecture is a parallel etry remains nebulous, it is obvious that the two dis- itas et Venustas’ by the Roman architect Vitruvius, quest in poetry evident in the writings of many a poet. ciplines share many parallels, including that of the clearly indicates the quality necessary to elevate con- William Wordsworth tells us that poetry is about the ultimate aim of evoking emotional meaning through struction to the realm of architecture. The first two “overflow of powerful feeling”, as does also the 20th lyricism. Both can exalt us, make our hearts leap and qualities imply a correct building construction meth- century poet Robert Frost “poetry must reach the eye, touch our soul. The ultimate aim of architecture re- odology and the manifestation of the materialistic the ear and most importantly, the heart.” mains perhaps best expressed in the words of master functions of the building. The quality of ‘Venustas’ ( architect Alvar Aalto: “every product of architecture beauty), is that which moves our heart and raises the Permanence vs transience should be a fruit of our endeavour to build an earth- building from construction to architecture. Architec- Architecture and poetry differ radically in the extent ly paradise”. In relation to poetry, Richard Garnett’s ture must therefore extend structural stability and of their longevity and permanence. Architecture 1897 statement that the poet’s objective is “to create materialistic function to transcend its physical dimen- much thought of as being finite and built to last, is in a perpetual feeling of enchantment” is equally signifi- sions and measurable limits and ignite a spark in the fact the most temporary and transient of all the arts. cant. heart of its users. Once the architect hands over the building to the cli- ent, ownership is lost and the building undergoes addi- The words of architect-poet John Hejduk who, when Maladies of contemporary architecture tions, changes or even possible demolition if monetary Dean of the Cooper Union College in New York, intro- It is the loss of enchantment and poetry in much of profit looms on the horizon. On the other hand, poetry duced poetics and poetry as part of the architectural today’s architecture that has caused the public to fall remains permanent and unchanged as Shakespeare course curriculum: “architecture and poetry, in the out of love with architects, architecture and the built emphasised: “not marble, nor the gilded monuments… end …are life-giving” provide an apt conclusion. environment. In today’s turbulent world, devoid of the will outlive this powerful rhyme”. As in the other arts

No.6__ artpaper / 27 MALETH/HAVEN/PORT Heterotopias of Evocation Malta Pavilion Biennale Arte 2019

CAVE OF DARKNESS - PORT OF NO RETURN, by Trevor Borg proposes a Loosely drawing from animal remains and artefacts excavated in a cave in Malta re-imagined multilayered narrative of ancient creatures and long lost civilizations, the work seeks to make (up) histories, to fabricate facts and to blur the boundaries exploring entrapment concealed within a Haven. 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

rench photographer Cyril Sancereau has spent February photographing the Gozitan landscape, during a residen- German artist Nadine Baldow has re- even further back as a consequence of cy that lead to his latest exhibition at Lazuli Art Gallery. cently spent four weeks at Meta Foun- our current form of civilisation”. dation’s Gozo residency; while there, Sancereau, who trained as an architect, specialises in ar- she worked on a series of large-scale Pristine Paradise will be on show at chitecture and landscape photography; through his work and highly coloured organic forms Valletta Contemporary until 5 April. he allows the specificities of place to be erased in order to made from polyurethane, entitled Pris- During this time, Baldow will collab- F create images without time, geography or social construc- tine Paradise. orate with Austrian curator Maren tion. He says of Gozo that the island awakens in him both a feeling of calm Richter in a discussion around the and serenity but also a feeling of an inquiétante étrangeté; an unsettling Baldow’s work examines our relation- themes addressed by her practice, to strangeness. Sancereau spent his residency walking and photographing, at- ship with nature and the environment, take place on 28 March. tempting to capture the island landscape’s ‘perpetual movement’. For him, asking if we are indeed part of nature the act of random wandering serves to amplify his experience of the island, ourselves, or if the planet’s natural state allowing for a close documentation of the intimate transformation of the is what we have made of it. Of this rela- surrounding landscape. tionship, she says “on the one hand, we perceive nature rather romantically, as GWL Gozo Winter Landscape will be on show at Lazuli Art Gallery, a paradise-like place of longing, while Gozo until 7 April. on the other hand, we keep pushing it

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) paint- ings 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

No.6__ artpaper / 29

MALETH/HAVEN/PORT Heterotopias of Evocation Malta Pavilion Biennale Arte 2019

OUTLAND is a video, audio and water installation that focuses on the indecisive- of Calypso, it traces the symbolic duality of the lover, as saviour/oppressor, explor- ness of man as he longs to re-trace his way to the ultimate Haven, caught between ing the uncertainty and lure of safety, and the longing for freedom. an island’s safety and the peril of returning to his homeland. Drawing from the story

Artist: Vince Briffa Director: Vince Briffa Title of work: Outland Actors: Paul Portelli, Sandra Mifsud Medium: Video, audio, installation, water Still Photography : Jon Wrigley Year: 2019 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

04.04.19 05.04.19 06.04.19 26.04.19 04.05.19 04.05.19 Until 25 April Until 19 April Until 3 May Until 26 May Until 31 May Until 16 June

ARJA SMUDGE LAYERS JULINU’S RADIO- A FRESH BREATH OBJECT, OBJETC, An exhibition of paintings Artists Gabriel Buttigieg, An exhibition of work by ACTIVE RAVIOLI OBJECC by Finnish-Maltese artist Ryan Falzon, Charles Balzan Gozo-based Italian artist In this exhibition of work Arja Nukarinen-Callus, and Sarah Chircop will Emmanuele Li Pira. Li Award-winning artist Julinu by Anton Calleja, one An exhibition by curated by Tonio Mallia, exhibit together for the first Pira began learning the (Julian Mallia), known for of the most versatile international artists Liza in which the artist tries to time in this collaborative art of etching and, more his meticulously-executed contemporary artists and Eurich (CA), Katri Kempas discover her bearings as exhibition. The show will specifically, the method visual ideas, presents his painters in the Maltese (FIN) and Letta Shtohryn a Finn who lived for some present works in mixed of etching with colours first solo exhibition. A Islands, he expresses his (UKR/MT). Operating time in Italy and has been media from photography in his teenage years. He playfully witty and thought- emotions, thoughts and from a platform of call living in Malta for over to drawings and prints, prefers to experiment with provoking collection of 17 inner feelings. This is a and response, each artist 23 years. The paintings exploring elements of the Aquatint technique as realistically-executed oil continuation of Calleja’s will produce work centred are inspired by physical vulnerability, intimacy, this allows him to create paintings, the exhibition artistic journey: always on various imagistic and locations: in fact, she calls ephemerality and an different tones on the plate. combines traditional seeking and experimenting text-based prompts sent by them ‘landscapes’, however, underlying sense of being At the same time, he has to art techniques with with techniques and one of the other two. This they go beyond ‘incidental’ exposed. Between the be careful, as the slightest Julinu’s characteristically new materials. His work process seeks to explore settings and seek to portray indistinctness of the raw variations will materially contemporary outlook on has been exhibited methods of translation: a soulscape in which the and subtle nature of the change the overall effect. familiar notions, presenting internationally and is to be from simulated to real, inner core of our existence artworks, one is confronted a strangely familiar found gracing many public from personal to referential is communicated through with the ‘smudge’ with Where: alternative universe. and private collections. and vice versa. Starting shapes and colours. which each artist resonates. art..e Gallery, from a shared interest in Victoria, Gozo Where: Where: objectness, the thematic Where: Where: Daily (including Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta art..e Gallery, for these exchanges will Art Galleries, Palazzo de Studio 87, Sundays) 9.30am to Mondays: 9am to 5pm Victoria, Gozo endeavour to dematerialise La Salle, Valletta Liesse Hill, Valletta 12.15pm Tuesdays to Fridays: 9am Daily, inc. Sundays: the material or, conversely, Mondays to Fridays: Mondays to Fridays: to 9pm 9.30am to 12.15pm materialise the immaterial. 8am to 7pm 10am to 6pm Saturdays & Sundays: Saturdays: 9am to 1:30pm Saturdays: 10am to 1pm 10am to 9pm Where: www.artsmalta.org/events www.kreattivita.org 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: 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, 14.06.19 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: Arthall and Dutch gallery Spright-Art present Wabi-Sabi, an exhibition of sculptures, collages and paintings made with found objects and 04.12.19 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

No.6__ artpaper / 31 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 and intertwined, attractive in its diversity, but also confusing in its dynamism. At- visibility or invisibility of border-crossing, and the fluid or mobile zones of crisis. Al- lantropa-X draws on this plural space, on a territory in which nowadays has new tantropa-X at the Maltese Pavilion will testify a topos, a transcultural space, a neu- challenges launched and pursued, charged with history but also with conflicts. ralgic border zone, in which multiple and heterogeneous crossings are performed

Klitsa Antoniou, Atlantropa-X, 2019, in- it: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center stallation detail, wood, seaweed, video Scientific Visualization Studio, Refugees projections, dimensions variable. Visual- Visual Documents Credit: Omega Televi- izations of Ocean Current Flows Cred- sion Channel, Cyprus. Spotlight / Events / Global Mar – May –‘19

PAINTING + SCULPTURE A selection of art events from around the world 01 – 07. ‘19 Events until October

26.01.19 13.02.19 24.02.19 26.03.19 31.03.19 13.04.19 Until 6 May Until 6 May Until 6 July Until 21 July Until 23 June Until 27 October

A PLACE THAT DIANE ARBUS: JOAN MIRÓ. THE BLACK MODELS: NANCY SPERO: CHIHULY AT EXISTS ONLY IN THE BIRTH OF THE FROM GÉRI- PAPER MIRROR KEW: IN MOONLIGHT: BEGINNING WORLD CAULT TO REFLECTIONS KATIE PATERSON MATISSE Paper Mirror traces the ON NATURE full arc of Spero’s artistic AND JMW This exhibition explores Drawn from MoMA’s the first seven years unrivalled collection of evolution, bringing TURNER A multi-disciplinary Iconic artist Dale Chihuly of photographer Diane Miró’s work and augmented exhibition exploring together more than 100 will exhibit his luminous Arbus’s career, from 1956 by several key loans, this works produced over six The largest UK exhibition aesthetic, political, social glass artworks in the to 1962, and is the first exhibition places the key decades in the first major to date of work by Scottish and racial issues as well landscape of Kew Gardens. solo show of her work in painting – The Birth of museum exhibition in the artist Katie Paterson, as the imagery unveiled Art installations, including the UK for 12 years. Arbus’ the World – in relation to US since the artist’s death paired with watercolours by the representation Chihuly’s Rotolo and photographs of children other major works by the in 2009. Artist and activist by JMW Turner. Turner of black figures in visual Seaforms series, will be and eccentrics, couples artist. It presents some 60 Nancy Spero produced a Contemporary is arts, from the abolition of located around the grounds, and circus performers, paintings, works on paper, radical body of work that commissioning Paterson to slavery in France to the in greenhouses and in the female impersonators and prints, illustrated books confronted oppression and make a new work that will modern day. The exhibition Shirley Sherwood Gallery pedestrians are among the and objects – produced inequality while challenging encompass the colour of focuses on the question of Botanical Art in the most intimate, surprising primarily between 1920, the the aesthetic orthodoxies the universe from its very of models and therefore Gardens. Chihuly’s famous and haunting works of art of year of Miró’s first, catalytic of contemporary art. beginning to its eventual the dialogue between the blue masterpiece Sapphire the 20th century. Organised trip to Paris and the early She drew on archetypal end. Like Paterson, JMW artist and the model. It Star will be on show at by The Metropolitan 1950s, when his unique representations of women Turner was fascinated explores the evolution of Victoria Gate, while a new, Museum of Art, New York, visual language became across cultures and times to by the sublime wonder the representation of black site-specific, work will be it features nearly 100 internationally renowned reframe history itself from a of nature, capturing the subjects in major works exhibited at Temperate photographs, the majority – to shed new light on the perspective that she termed changing and atmospheric by Théodore Géricault, House. of which have never before development of his poetic ‘woman as protagonist’. qualities of light, air and Charles Cordier, Edouard been exhibited in Europe. process and pictorial weather in his paintings. Manet, Paul Cézanne and Kew Gardens, London universe. MoMA PS1, New York Paterson has selected a Henri Matisse, as well as the www.kew.org/kew-gardens Hayward Gallery, Southbank www.momaps1.org group of over 20 Turner photographs of Nadar and Centre, London The Museum of Modern Art, watercolours and paintings Carjat. www.southbankcentre.co.uk New York www.moma.org Image: Nancy Spero. The to be interspersed with her Goddess Nut II. 1990. works. Musée d’Orsay, Paris Image: Jack Dracula at a Image: Joan Miró. The Hand-printing and www.musee-orsay.fr bar, New London, Conn. Birth of the World. printed collage on Turner Contemporary 1961 (detail), by courtesy Montroig, late summer– paper. © 2019 The Nancy www.turnercontemporary. Image: Edouard Manet of The Met Museum of Art, fall 1925. Acquired Spero and Leon Golub org (1832-1883), Olympia, New York, copyright © through an anonymous 1863, Oil on canvas, Foundation for the Arts/ The Estate of Diane Arbus, fund, the Mr and Mrs Paris, Musée d’Orsay, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, LLC. Joseph Slifka Fund, the offered to the French State NY, courtesy of Galerie Armand G. Erpf Fund by public subscription Lelong & Co. Photo: and by gift of the artist. initiated by Claude Michael Bodycomb © 2018 Successió Miró/ Monet, 1890 ©RMN, Hervé Artists Rights Society Lewandowski (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

07.03.19 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

04.04.19 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

No.6__ artpaper / 33 Interview / Malta / Ritty Tacsum Mar – May –‘19

MALTA where she lays her head

Ritty Tacsum is currently presenting an intimate and or figurative work. I think it is the way I am wired: personal body of work: photography focusing on the I enjoy challenging myself, as well as the viewers. I sea (represented through the element of water), and believe it is also a representation of who I am as a the bed (representing the intimacy of interior spac- person. es). To find out more about her work process and her way of thinking, we put some questions to Ritty LGB: There has always been a degree of ambiguity in (RT) and her curator and long-time collaborator, Lisa Ritty’s work – from her very first exhibition in 2011. I Gwen Baldacchino (LGB). think that, back then, it was more overt and now it’s become more subtle. In fact, her first images were la- In the past, you’ve used quite intricate manip- belled surreal – also because her dreams were literally ulation of photographs, repeating or mirroring a point of departure for her compositions, for each of architectural images and creating imaginary the photoshoots she orchestrated. Her current body landscapes. Your current work, however, seems to of work has less of that orchestrated or staged ambi- focus more on the human body; can you explain a guity and more of an autobiographic element. bit about this development in your work? humanoids. What is markedly different is that she no Can you tell us a bit more about your work pro- RT: I think development in one’s work is quite a nat- longer feels the need to mask, to give them an alter- cess: how do you start to put an image together, ural process. Even though I still create architectural native persona or semblance. Her figures are no lon- what are your thoughts during this development work which is highly manipulated, my primary focus ger anthropomorphic. Instead she captures them as and how much do you feel you need to stay in con- has shifted towards the human body. There’s a certain they are, in their bare nakedness. trol of the final image? element of rawness which has held my interest for a couple of years now. I love the dynamics of work- There are layers of meaning in your work: vul- RT: I always have an idea in my mind of what the final ing with people, especially in the past few months, so nerability, peace, even some humour. At the same image will look like, but the beauty of an unknown lo- much so that the number of people I work with on any time, your new images create scenes that not only cation, the weather and the dynamic between me and one shoot has become more ambitious. Before, it was impart meaning but are also quite enigmatic and the model(s) always influence the overall aesthetic just the model and myself, but in the last couple of difficult to unpack. Is this ambiguity important to of the final image. Sometimes the result is wonderful, months I’ve had up to nine models working together. your new body of work, and was it important to other times I just discard the photos after the shoot your work before? and call it a day. >> LGB: Actually, I’d say that Ritty is returning to the human body. In her first exhibition, her work was all RT: The element of ambiguity has always been im- about the body, or rather the imagined bodies of her portant in the work I create, be it for my architectural

No.6__ artpaper / 34 Interview / Malta / Ritty Tacsum Mar – May –‘19

MALTA

The colour palette of this exhibition is very serene: The idea of the bed as a refuge is a beautiful one: patterns which emerged organically. And that is how quite subdued and almost reticent. How important quite calming and comforting. It’s also a very per- this exhibition was born: understanding the patterns were these colours to the atmosphere you built in sonal sentiment. Do you see your work as autobi- related to the sea, to water and to intimate, confined the images? ographical and how much of yourself do you ex- spaces such as her bed. And, yes, the work is autobi- pose in your work? ographical – whether it taps into reality or fantasy is RT: The choice of colours for my images has been another matter, but it is a reflection of the self, even quite consistent in the last couple of years, primarily RT: In my first exhibition, back in 2011, I put a bed next though she may not always be aware of it. because I feel it enhances the mood I want to portray to the works on display (an unconscious reference to in my images. The colour palette for me is essential Tracey Emin). At the time, the bed had a significant Do you think the relationship to the sea as a place as it unites the mood and feeling into a holistic whole. meaning for me... I was going through a difficult patch of refuge and solace is intrinsic to a Maltese land- and I spent most of my time in it, creating works in my scape, or do you think of it as a more universal LGB: Ritty’s choice of colour palette was previously own bedroom. Nowadays, the bed has different mean- theme? sporadic, spread across works created over a span of ings to me: pain, love, joy – it is one of the only places time. Now this deep greyish blue-green tone has al- where I find myself, over and over again. And, yes, to RT: Growing up on an island, it is impossible not to most become her signature – and one which charac- some extent my work is autobiographical: some imag- build a strong relationship with the sea. The sea has terises and almost defines her entire body of work. It es are a clear depiction of an experience while others always had a great meaning in my life, and I feel it is not unlike the colour of the tempestuous sea: it is are simply a thought or a fantasy. represents the duality in myself – at times calm, and almost impenetrable. In its density, it stops being cold at times rough, with no in-betweens. and almost achieves an uncanny sense of warmth, LGB: Having worked with Ritty since her very first ex- which is juxtaposed by her alabaster white bodies. hibition in 2011, I have never stopped studying and Where I Lay Down is on show at the Palazzo de la following her work. I couldn’t help reading the Salle, Republic Street, Valletta until 28 March.

Images © Ritty Tacsum

NEWS / MoMA MoMA Reveals Final Design for Expansion and Renovation

he Museum of Modern Art in New York has announced that its ambitious expan- sion project, adding more than 40,000 square feet of gallery space to the muse- um, will be completed by October 2019. The design, by architects Diller Scofidio T + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, is intended to better connect the museum with its midtown Northsouth section-perspective through the new gallery spaces at Manhattan neighbourhood and to allow the museum to ex- The Museum of Modern Art, looking east along Fifty-third Street. hibit much more of its collection. The expansion project will © 2017 Diller Scofidio + Ren 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 Octo- ber with an updated curatorial vision and live, experimental programming. View of the restored Bauhaus staircase, with Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Staircase (1932). Photo by Elevation of The Museum of Modern Art on Fifty-third Street with Iwan Baan cutaway view below street level. © 2017 Diller Scofidio + Renfro

No.6__ artpaper / 35 Review / Tate Modern / Pierre Bonnard Mar – May –‘19 Highlights

LONDON

GEORGE MICALLEF EYNAUD Walking into one of the Tate Modern’s galleries on a canvas over a period of many years, he invades your decidedly grey London morning, I was caught in my field of vision with an eclectic array of subjects, tak- tracks, unprepared for what lay in store. Before me ing your very eyes hostage, insisting you become a was a scene of pure Dionysian serenity. The dreary slow looker in turn. Studying another small nude, this tone of that January day, that otherwise lifeless room, time with her back turned to the viewer, her figure The was suddenly offset by two sunlit interiors. In them enigmatically concealed by a doorway, a frame within were two nudes, women whose lithe forms were de- a frame, I could feel the heat of the warm sun as it scribed, almost crudely, in a cadence of the most ex- hit her back, illuminating the gentle swell of her hips quisite pinks, reds, ambers, honey and green, and I with all the warmth of an evening sunset. It was a was faced with a dance of light, of heaven-sent colour. pure summer’s evening encapsulated in pigment and, looking at it, as with Proust and his Madeline, I was Colour Those women glowed with the warm flame of life, of transported straight back, back to those long child- humanity, of sexuality, of a tame place to call home hood days lounging on the rocks by the murmuring and the wild and fearsome spirit of the Mediterra- sea as the sun inched below the horizon. nean landscape all at the same time. Forget the devil; it was salvation that I found in those details: the clean It is always a delight to discover a painting that can of crockery awaiting the midday meal, an empty chair, have such a magical hold over you, and I use the word the tidy room, the perennial dachshund nuzzling its ‘magic’ here without embarrassment or hesitation. head on the chequered tablecloth in close anticipa- For what Bonnard pulls off time and again is noth- tion, the glimpse of the brilliant blue sea outside. And ing short of a magic trick, except here there is often suddenly, out of this mundaneness, this crystallised real enchantment at play, not just smoke and mirrors. Memory moment of expectation never to be fulfilled, all of ex- Working from memory, Bonnard immortalises hazy istence seemed to have finally found its purpose. recollections in paint, transcribing them into beauti- fully amorphous visions where everyday objects be- As this comprehensive retrospective demonstrates, come both iconised and simultaneously intertwined Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) is the kind of painter within a much wider composition. who makes you consider such fleeting moments, and to do so, he demands your attention. A slow work- In Bonnard, the subject of the picture is rarely any one er, often obsessively returning to work on the same particular ‘thing’, the edges of the canvas are always Pierre Bonnard, Coffee (Le Café) 1915, Oil paint on canvas, Tate Pierre Bonnard, Coffee

No.6__ artpaper / 36 George Micallef Eynaud studied Fine Art at the Camberwell Review / Tate Modern / Pierre Bonnard College of Arts and is currently based Mar – May –‘19 in London.

LONDON

the world outside those ever-present doors, those and photography (one need only think of the much somewhat oppressively-patterned walls. Sometimes more recent painterly translation of photographs in all the decoration, the rhythmically composed grids the work of artists such as Gerhard Richter and Luc and lattices of vibrant hues, start to resemble a gilded Tuymans, for example). In my opinion, it also plac- cage, a prettily-tiled prison of either Marthe’s making, es Bonnard in a much more direct conversation with or of Bonnard’s own construction. some of his French Impressionist predecessors (Mary Cassatt, Edouard Manet) as well as some of his other In another painting, Bonnard places his recent fiancée contemporaries further abroad such as the British art- alongside his then-lover (Marthe) in an image of un- ist Walter Sickert, who portrayed scenes of domestic easy Arcadian placidity. Knowing that his bride-to-be mendacity while working extensively from press and would go on to kill herself when Bonnard called off personal photographs and with whom Bonnard’s work the engagement to take up with Marthe, and that the has been surprisingly unaligned. existence of each woman was kept secret from the other in reality, lends this painting an eerie, haunt- Unlike a more figuratively astute artist such as Sickert, ed quality in spite of its sun-dappled surface. Indeed, however, Bonnard’s somewhat lackadaisical approach the guilt that this event caused Bonnard apparently to human anatomy is another aspect of his limitation drove him to paint a series of much darker paintings as an academic draughtsman that can, on occasion, than normal which may also have served as the art- become somewhat distracting, especially as you begin ist’s commentary of sorts on two World Wars which to try and comprehend the mechanics of his arms and are otherwise conspicuous only by their total absence, legs which often suffer from the same sausage-meat and it seems remiss that this period of the artist’s ca- syndrome that affect many of his predecessor Turn- reer is not expounded on further at the Tate. er’s similarly disjointed figures. A more critical curato- rial eye could have been applied to this end during the Bonnard himself could be artistically uneven, too. selection process, especially as the show feels some- Much ink has been spilt in outlining his skill (or lack what overstuffed as it is. thereof) in drawing at the technically proficient lev- el that was advanced in the academic circles of the Ultimately, however, these are minor quibbles, as even time, but I would protest this point, citing the afore- Bonnard’s minor works leave us with much to admire. mentioned notebook sketches as evidence of a keen And when he is good, he is so very, very good. Some and refined sense of draughtsmanship. The wealth of of his paintings, such as his lush gardens, enigmatic intimate photographs taken by Bonnard and Marthe bathroom scenes and receding sea-backed landscapes reveal another fascinatingly modern sense of exper- are, once seen, unforgettable, where all else coalesces imentation with medium and reproduction, serving into a divine whole, rendering anatomy and perspec- as direct sources for his painted scenes after being tive into irrelevant foibles. In Bonnard’s best work, to altered and rearranged. paraphrase John Fowles, he anoints even the most trivial of moments with an unexpected and stimulat- Pierre Bonnard, Nude in an Interior c. 1935, National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA This aspect of Bonnard’s practice, which has only re- ing reverence, so that the moment, and all such mo- cently been given any serious attention by academics, ments, can never be entirely trivial again. is all the more engaging to a contemporary audience as it so directly pertains to the very current discourse Pierre Bonnard: The Colour of Memory is on show full of potential and activity, fragments of cropped fig- about the relationship between painting at the Tate Modern until 6 May. ures like unwanted intruders in a family photograph. This could be the result of Bonnard’s working meth- od – 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 hun- dreds of carefully considered and annotated composi- tional sketches that abound in the exhibition. In any case, the resulting sensation is that the scenes depict- ed exist outside the confine of the canvas and that life – messy and uncontrolled – continues to exist beyond the parameters of the frame.

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 re- clusive 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

No.6__ artpaper / 37 Highlights

Choreography for an Exhibition brings a multidisciplinary exhibi- tion, starring international cho- reographers, to Naples. The ex- hibition features over 160 works, displayed alongside archaeolog- ical, ancient and modern piec- es, in addition to a site-specific dance programme commissioned to celebrate the performative and physical aspects of Mapplethor-

Innovative Mapplethorpe Innovative Exhibition pe’s photography. >>

No.6__ artpaper / 38 No.6__ Artpaper / 39 Art News / Europe / Africa Mar – May –‘19 Highlights

ANNIVERSARIES ART MARKET

Modern & Contemporary African Giant Anniversaries in 2019 Art Sale 2 APRIL 2019 | 2:00 PM BST | LONDON

2019 has the dubious honour of celebrating the an- Mauritshuis in The Hague and the Museum De Lak- Sotheby’s fourth dedicated auction of Modern and Con- niversaries of the deaths of two giants of art histo- enhall in Leiden. 2019 is also the 500th anniversary temporary African Art will take place in London on 2 ry. This year is the 350th anniversary of the death of of the death of the great Leondardo da Vinci in 1519. April 2019 and will include a specially curated collection Rembrandt in 1669. His home country of the Neth- A retrospective at the Louvre, and an eight-month of paintings, photographs, drawings and sculpture from erlands is paying homage to this Old Master with long programme in Milan centred around the Castello the 20th and 21st centuries from across the African exhibitions in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Sforzesco will mark the occasion. continent. Highlights from this sale include works by re- spected artists, including El Anatsui, Hassan El Glaoui, Skunder Boghossian, Ibrahim El Salahi, Ablade Glover and Cheri Samba. www.sothebys.com

Chéri Samba Ablade Glover Petit Parcelle de pouvoir Market Scene Est: $20 – $30k Est: $6 – $8k

Self Portrait at the Age of 34, Rembrandt The Virgin and Child with St Anne, Leonardo da Vinci

COLOUR

Eddy Kamuanga Hassan El Glaoui Palm La Sorite de Sultan What Colour is Est: $25 – $35k Est: $80 – $12k 2019? As January rolls around, designers, art enthusiasts and Artistic Director of Sonsbeek fashionistas keep an eager eye out for the Pantone Co- lour of the Year. This year they weren’t disappointed, 2020 Announced 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 Bonaventure Soh Be- and colour influences. This year’s colour draws on a jeng Ndikung has been human need for connection, warmth and activity; appointed artistic direc- evocative of coral reefs, it is natural and soft, yet ener- tor of Sonsbeek 2020. getic and bright. The 12th edition of the www.pantone.com quadrennial art festival will take place in and around Arnhem during the summer of 2020. Ndikung, born in Cam- eroon, was appointed BREXIT LOOMING CLOSER by unanimous recom- mendation of an international selection committee; With a Brexit deal - or even news of how the United Kingdom will leave the EU - still a long way off, he is a curator, art critic, author and biotechnologist, the art world, like other industries, is trying to understand how a no-deal, or any deal will impact as well as the founder and artistic director of SAVVY the sector. In January, Arts Council England went so far as to publish advice on the movement of Contemporary, Berlin. He was also curator-at-large of art imports and exports in the case of a no-deal. The UK government has also published guidelines Documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel, and was guest on issues such as the export of objects of cultural interest if an agreement is not reached. Mean- curator of the 2018 Dak’Art Biennale in Senegal. This while, artists with links both in the UK and in other EU countries are acting to ensure that their year, he will be curating the Finnish Pavilion at the careers and inventories are not caught up in a post-Brexit bureaucratic nightmare. Venice Biennale, as part of Miracle Workers Collective of which he is a co-founder.

No.6__ artpaper / 40 Spotlight / Exhibition / Naples Mar – May –‘19

NAPLES

Modern & Contemporary African >> cont. from page 35 Art Sale Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) grew up in the conservative and racially divided 1950s America to become one of the most critically acclaimed photographers of 2 APRIL 2019 | 2:00 PM BST | LONDON 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.

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 Contempo- ranea Donnaregina, in Naples until 8 April. www.madrenapoli.it Patti Smith,1978 © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. “Over 160 works, alongside archaeological and modern pieces, and a specially-com- missioned site-specific dance programme.”

Campari is marketed and distributed by Farsons Beverage Imports Co. Ltd. Trade Enquiry: 23814400

No.6__ Artpaper / 41 Art News / UK Mar – May –‘19 Highlights

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 ultra-matte acrylic paint that absorbs over 98% of rights to use Vantablack, a pigment developed visible light, and aims to make it accessible to art- by Surrey NanoSystems in the UK, and one of ists globally. the darkest known substances due to its extreme light-trapping qualities, the acquisition set off a se- It remains to be seen if this campaign will prompt ries of protest acts by artists, who in turn created any further acts of colour-ownership from either extreme colours, allowing them to be used freely artist. by all practitioners except from Kapoor himself. 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 ‘black- er’ black. The campaign has raised over €200,000 for the development of Black 3.0, a user-friendly

MALTA

ink and photography. Acute ob- tional Airport from 29 May to Exhibition: Inspired by China servations in China have been 28 August, and at the Medi- reflected upon by each artist, terranean Conference Centre Four Maltese artists who trav- ence China’s diverse cultures, The exhibition, the sixth in the and are now interpreted in in Valletta from 1 to 17 Sep- elled to China during 2018 are the artists - Debbie Bonello, series, is curated by E. V. Borg, each artist’s individual style. tember. More information on exhibiting their work in an itin- Andrew Borg, Damian Ebejer who has long been an active www.malta.cccweb.org. erant exhibition hosted by the and Lucienne Spiteri - were partner of the Inspired in China Inspired in China will be China Cultural Centre in Malta. invited to visit the coastal prov- initiative. The observations of on show at the Cavalieri Art ince of Fujian, known as the the artists during their travels Hotel in St Julian’s from 23 In an annual initiative that al- birthplace of the ancient Mari- are interpreted through oil on March to 28 May, at the Busi- lows Maltese artists to experi- time Silk Road. canvas, water-colours, Chinese ness Centre, Malta Interna-

No.6__ artpaper / 42 Christine Xuereb Seidu founded Christine X Art Gallery in 2004 after a university degree in Art History and Anthropology. She now lives in Ghana Art News / Africa / Senegal where she continues to explore African art and culture, after handing her Mar – May –‘19 gallery over to its new owner

AFRICA

CHRISTINE XUEREB SEIDU Dynamic Senegal

he recent opening before travelling to the Wright Museum of Dakar’s Museum of Art in Wisconsin and the Kent State of Black Civilisa- University Centre for Visual Art Gallery. tions, amid heated Between July and October of this year debates about re- it will also be on show at the Zuccaire claiming art taken Gallery at Stony Brook University, New from colonisers, York. has sparked a new personal interest in Senegalese artist Fally Sene Sow has TSenegalese art, even though Senegal’s recently completed a residency in Ma- capital already houses one of the oldest drid and will soon be showing a solo ex- West African art institutions, l’Institute hibition in collaboration with TRAMES Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) in Dakar, as well as exhibiting at the Museum of African Arts. Beirut Art Fair in September. Fellow contemporary sculptor Mamady Seydi The IFAN serves as the main site of will be exhibiting at the Datris Foun- the Dak’Art Biennale. Dak’Art, a Da- dation in France this summer, whilst kar-based exhibition of contemporary Ibrahima Thiam will be at the Forum African art, has been operating bi-an- Transculturel d’Art Contemporain in nually since 1996, and is the African Haiti in October. Viya Diba, Diadji Diop, continent’s longest running grand-scale Mamadou Cisse, Omar Ba, Eric Pina art event. Since 2014 it has also been Horror District, 2018, Ibrahima Dieye and Ndoye Douts are amongst other open to non-African artists. artists who are also making a name for contemporary figurative artist, Ibrahi- individuals uncovering aspects of their themselves locally and internationally. ma Gningue, and Galerie le Manege-In- identity as they reflect on everyday life This art biennale paved the way for stitute Francais is holding a duo exhi- in contemporary Senegal. the opening of several art galleries Senegalese contemporary artists who bition, with Ibrahima Dieye` and Badou and residencies in Dakar and nearby. are expanding beyond borders are Diack, from 19 March. “Artists across Senegal think deeply The Leopold Sedar Senghor Galerie at many. Maimouna Guerresi, who is about the world around them, in both the Village des Arts, Loman Art Gal- represented by Mariane Ibrahim Gallery The Thread, a cultural centre and artist a local and a global sense” said Under- lery, Yassine Arts Gallery, La Galerie in Seattle, USA, is exhibiting in art residency operating in rural Sinthian wood, when asked why he focused on Antenna and Wakh Art are a few to fairs in Mexico, South Africa and the since 2015, works with artists who have Senegalese artworks. “Many of them mention. OH Gallery is another gallery United Arab Emirates this year, and will a genuine interest in the area, provid- excel at leveraging the various insti- which only opened recently, repre- produce a solo show in Girona, Spain in ing an opportunity to create cultural tutions to reach new audiences and senting some of the best Senegalese June. Amongst Senegal’s contemporary bridges through opening its doors to further their art-making practices. It’s expressionist and cubist artists such as photographers, we have the celebrat- locals. Similarly, but in Dakar, the Raw one of the most dynamic art spaces on Aliou Diack, Kine Aw, Amadou Camara ed Omar Victor Diop, who is recon- Material Company gallery and residen- the continent and in the global south”. Gueye, Pape Samba Ndiaye, and the structing Africans in history, as well as cy, curated by Koyo Kouoh, produces The exhibition includes work by some duo currently exhibiting Oeuvres until Delphine Diallo, Boubacar Toure Man- exceptional contemporary art shows, of the best contemporary artists cur- 31 March 2019: Sambou Diouf and Soly demory, Arebenor Bassene and Djibril mainly featuring international artists. rently active in Senegal: Laylah Amat- Cisse. Aliou Diack will have his first Drame. In the world of fashion, there ullah Barrayn, Manthia Diawara, Khalifa solo exhibition at the gallery in October is Selly Reby Kane and if you are after Senegalese art also caught the interest Dieng, Ibrahima Dieye, Pap Souleye and November of this year. some African interior décor for your of Kent State University Assistant Pro- Fall, Camara Gueye, Amalia Ramanan- home, try IKEA – which has recently fessor Dr Joseph Underwood, who re- kirahhina, Henri Sagna, Fatou Kande Galerie Arte also holds regular exhi- signed her up as one of its designers! cently curated the exhibition The View Senghor, Fally Sene Sow and Ibrahima bitions, its most recent being Sama from Here: Contemporary Perspec- Thiam. This exhibition was shown in Dekk-Ma Ville by the highly stylised tives from Senegal, which focuses on the OFF at last year’s Dak’Art Biennale,

“Artists across Sene- gal 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.

No.6__ artpaper / 43 Review / Lucio Fontana / New York Mar – May –‘19 Highlights

NEW YORK

>> cont. from cover

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 any- body whether they know of his meticulously painted can- vases – many white, a few in earthy tones, some in a bril- liant primary colour – with a large laceration or lacerations defiantly peering through to a realm of darkness beyond and they would say – yes, of course ANN DINGLI I know them.

Fontana’s elegantly hacked paintings have become visual signifiers of the moment when art began to discard conven- tional notions of what painting and sculpting needed to be. They signify the complex am- bitions of Contemporary Art, The cuts 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, Fon- tana’s Cuts came a lot sooner than many of the most prev- alent contemporary theories had a chance to really lay claim over the art world. They laid endure, as the foundation for Conceptual, Performance, and Minimalist Art simply by virtue of wanting to accomplish a singular, albe- it lofty, goal: to meaningfully capture the precise moment in time when they were created and to do so by distilling move- ment, time, colour, space and sound into one conceivable ar- tistic operation or, as Fontana does the and his contemporaries put it in their White Manifesto, to capture a “moment of synthe- unknown sis”.

Spatial Concept, The Quanta (Concetto Spaziale, I Quanta), 1959,Water-based paint on canvas with slashes, Private collection, Italy

No.6__ artpaper / 44 ANN DINGLI is a freelance art and design writer, content consultant, and media strategist currently living in New York. She writes and edits for Review / Lucio Fontana / New York various cultural publications and runs her own design blog, I think I like it Mar – May –‘19 (think-like-it.com).

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 early days, working primarily as ditioning your eye to recognise cal theoretical certainty. It’s no minds us that, despite having ubiquity, his latest retrospec- a sculptor, occupy the precur- a glimmer of what is inevitably wonder he has been quoted as achieved an artistic approach tive – Lucio Fontana: On the sory rooms in the exhibition. to come. You can palpably feel being “happy to go to the grave which, to this day, feels so cat- Threshold, showing at the Met Sculpture was the backdrop the artist searching for the after such a discovery”. With egorically resolved, he was still Breuer until mid-April – is only to Fontana’s upbringing. His means through which to signify one decisive slash, Fontana was searching, still grappling. This the second display of his work father was a funerary sculptor the true expression of the uni- now able to contend with the very human exploration is per- to take place in New York: the working in Rosario, Argentina, verse: a visual search to put an notions of space and infinity, to haps why so many people know last took place over 40 years making tomb sculptures for lo- end to what he would eventu- create an entry point into a new and are drawn to Fontana’s ago. Fontana first took a Stan- cal cemeteries. In his twenties, ally declare as man having “ex- dimension that persists beyond work. Indeed, his cut canvases ley knife to his canvas in 1958, he moved to Milan, Italy and hausted pictorial and sculptural art. He backed many of his cut deliver us to a threshold – one but he had been punching received classical training in forms of art”. works with black gauze, inten- which separates us from what holes and experimenting with carving at the Brera Academy sifying the illusion of endless- we can conceivably possess and penetration into the fourth di- of Fine Arts. You can feel him getting there ness and thus allowing viewers what we cannot because, even mension for around 10 years once your reach his Buchi to contemplate what for them is though we can now identify the by then, marking his vision- But, as evidenced by the works (Holes). Textured, seeming- the unknown. Viscerally, Fon- darkness of infinity, we are still ary movement into gestural on display in the show, Fon- ly extra-terrestrial, terrain is tana had come far away from nowhere near to understanding art-making at roughly the same tana’s sculpting predilections poked, punctured and drawn where he started, but notional- it. time as Jackson Pollock began favoured brazen, perceptible into, creating a topography that ly he was still embroiled in the creating his drip paintings. modelling rather than classi- provokes and ultimately up- same preoccupations: achiev- Lucio Fontana: On the Needless to say, Pollock has en- cal carving. He worked like a ends dimensionality. By now, ing the physical representation Threshold, is on show at the joyed categorically superior ac- Baroque sculptor in a hurry, Fontana is done with represen- of existence and its intricacies, Met Breuer, New York, until tion in the New York retrospec- exuding zealous motion whilst tational sculpture, but he’s not of that which is undetermined, 14 April tive shows department. Still, sublimating influences from entirely painting. These works of the beyond – perhaps of that the show at the Met Breuer Etruscan sarcophagi and Fu- are not regular easel paintings; by which he had already been serves to soundly – if succinctly turist sculpture into figures they are devices with which confronted with while growing – cement Fontana’s unmistak- and objects that at once revere to explore ‘Spatial Concepts’ – up in the care of a funerary able, and multi-layered influ- and defy all art movements that which is the apt title he gave to sculptor: death. ence on Contemporary Art. came before them. his first perforated works. Fontana is known to have in- It does so not without allowing Moving through the exhibition, The climactic rupturing of can- scribed the back of his cut can- viewers a brief glimpse at what it is easy to feel as though you vas finally releases Fontana’s vases with personal messages, came before the artist’s most are searching for Fontana’s body of work from the realms of varying from the theoretical renowned breakthrough: his eventual signature style – con- experimentation into unequivo- to the ordinary: an act that re-

Spatial Concept, The End of God (Concetto Spaziale, La Fine di Dio), 1964, Spatial Concept, New York 10 (Concetto Spaziale, New York 10), 1962,Copper with slashes and scratches, Fondazi- Oil on canvas with holes and incisions, RachofskyCollection, Dallas one Lucio Fontana, Milan

No.6__ Artpaper / 45 TMYT PRESENTS WILLIAM GOLDING’S

DIRECTED BY IAN MOORE FRIDAY 12TH APRIL 7PM, SATURDAY 13TH APRIL 3PM & 7PM SUNDAY 14TH APRIL 3PM & 7PM, TEATRU MANOEL, VALLETTA Tickets €10 / [email protected] / 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 Books / Malta freelance writer, regularly contributing culture-related articles to various local Mar – May –‘19 newspapers, magazines and blogs.

MALTA

GIULIA PRIVITELLI Into no man’s land, we march

“Hee with a crew, whom like Ambition For some reason - I was initially not entirely sure Spread over just under three decades (the earliest il- joyns, With him or under him to tyrannize, why - the moment I cracked open No Man’s Land lustrations published in the book date to 1991 issues Marching from Eden towards the West, and began reading through its first pages Milton’s of the Sunday Times of Malta), the strength of the epic poem Paradise Lost came to mind. I re-read audio-visual lament might have dissipated easily; it shall finde The Plain, wherein a black the verses describing the construction of the Tower might have gone unnoticed except by those analyti- bituminous gurge Boiles out from under of Babel, and I understood. Then I encountered the cal individuals who were looking closely and making ground, the mouth of Hell; Of Brick, and first illustration of the publication and sure enough sense of whatever decisions were being taken – from of that stuff they cast to build A Cities and an ominous feeling swinging somewhere between a public transportation to construction and infrastruc- Tower, whose top may reach to Heav’n; Davidic Psalm and Dante’s Inferno crept its way in, ture, waste management and pollution, changing And get themselves a name…” nudging my fingers to the edge of the paper, turning demographics, illegalities, environmental policies it slowly; that hopeful journey for an irretrievable or lack thereof, and so on and so forth. But when something had begun. However, the beginning is not over 20 years are concentrated in a book with just John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book XII, 38-45 always a comfortable place to be; the journey in No under 240 pages of written text and illustrations, the Man’s Land, in truth, begins from the trenches. The lament inevitably escalates into a high-magnitude signs of where we have failed are clearly marked; it tremor. It is visible and audible; hardly an exagger- is useless pretending that the place we are now is a ation, and impossible to ignore. It is almost as if good place to be, or that the crossing to our desired something must be necessarily condensed together destination will be an easy one. From the trenches for it to be noticed – very much like the number of everything does indeed seem to be more exagger- vehicles present on our roads, increasing construc- ated than it really is. Perhaps, it is better that way. tion cranes and population counts, rising apartment For there is no shelter in No Man’s Land, and our blocks… Sadly, as No Man’s Land reminds us, no crossing, it is almost certain, will be a crooked one single book will be able to contain, much less sup- with many twists, turns and doubts along the way. press or alleviate, the magnitude of our environmen- tal injustices. But then again, all the more reason for Let’s at least get one thing straight: this book is good practices to be encouraged and such books to alarmingly easy to relate to; you’ll catch yourself be written. nodding and sighing in agreement at situations you Steve Bonello, plate 98, 2017, from No Man’s Land (2018) know only too well, but you will also find yourself Some might come to consider this book as a biased, shaking your head in disapproval at the state of claustrophobic reaction of a few environment-sen- things, possibly frowning in disappointment at your sitive individuals to the apparent horror vacui or own lack of action or awareness, as was indeed my agoraphobic tendencies of an authority whose idea case. Though it might come across differently, the of ‘doing something’ only has real value if it can be author and illustrator do not seek to judge anyone in seen, preferably in the form of a building. Do the particular nor anyone or anything in general, for that voices in No Man’s Land attack fear, while they are matter. What they do, however, is hold up a rather themselves born of fear – fear of losing something large mirror to all that has gone on around them irretrievable, that is, more of what has been lost al- over the past 20 years or so of life on the Islands; a ready? They might be right to think so. It is after all, mirror that has gathered at least 20 years of reflec- as the author puts it, a “tragedy”, and as we know, tions (and dust); enough, by any moral standard and every tragedy is frightful. But let us not forget the justice system, to allow for a fair comment – or even other half: humour. “Wit”, Freud tells us, “permits us judgement – to be made on the state of things. to make our enemy ridiculous through that which we Steve Bonello, plate 30, 2011, from No Man’s Land (2018) could not utter loudly or consciously on account of The lament put forward in No Man’s Land is clearly existing hindrances”. It is the weapon by which both based on sound statistical data, yet it comes no- Marie Briguglio and Steve Bonello step into no man’s where close to a statistical report. In other words, it land – that unrestricted land where few indeed dare reads like a well-designed website would, with words to step. Ultimately, their voices – with word and and well-placed images ‘effortlessly’ linked to each image – come through as apparently fearless, blunt, other, and all the while without the reader ever hav- but as sharp as a double-edged sword, swishing and ing to give a moment’s thought to the brain-busting slashing to either side with impeccable aim, hardly code running in the background. The author and the ever missing. And that, friends, could only mean one illustrator have already scratched their heads long thing: there is still hope. enough so that we won’t have to; if we were indeed to scratch our heads, it would likely be due to No Man’s Land: people, places & pollution by our realisation (finally!) of how dire the situation Marie Briguglio and Steve Bonello is published really is. by Kite Group, Malta, 2018. Steve Bonello, plate 160, 2017, from No Man’s Land (2018)

No.6__ artpaper / 47 Big Bang Unico. Case in 18K King Gold invented and developed by Hublot with a ceramic bezel. In-house chronograph UNICO movement. Interchangeable strap using patented hublot.com One-Click system.

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