Valletta may be more well known for its history and cultural past than its cultural present. But it’s been doing very well of late in living up to its name as it plays host to all sorts of literary, musical, artistic, festive, theatrical and gastronomic events, month in month out.

This weekend sees another art and wine special at the National Museum of Fine Arts, South Street, with a programme throughout 28 & 29 November. The event is aimed at giving us ‘ a passport to enter a world of colours, visit amazing places and meet interesting people…’.

So, it’s a bit of a medley really, but sounds worth investigating, especially if you’ve kids in tow, or are at a loose end – Sunday afternoon, characters in historical costume will be walking the museum’s corridors! And adults might like the ‘Art & Wine @ South Street’ on Saturday evening – another in what’s become a series of such evenings. This time, Maltese contemporary artist Caesar Attard is discussing his works.

Midsea Books, which is co-hosting the event along with Heritage Malta, has a range of their Melintensia books on sale, to complement the talks, presentations, exhibits, and films.

Other highlights:
Saturday at 11.00 hrs, art historian Lino Borg will discuss printing techniques; and there will be what are described as ‘historic films’ screened in the afternoon.
Sunday morning sees a special presentation of Midsea Book’s publication of The Year Baroque Painting in Malta, delivered by its author Keith Sciberras PhD. Sunday afternoon, graphic artist Mark Scicluna, designer of a set of five bookmarks featuring artists represented in the National Collection, will be around.
Fun & Fact:
There are story-telling sessions at times throughout the weekend, as well as special tours for those who may not have ventured into the world of art before. The event also includes music, book prizes and a quiz desk.

Admission:
Entrance to the museum will be free on Saturday and Sunday but donations are welcomed. Further information from Heritage Malta.

Malta InsideOut is also about those who straddle being insiders and outsiders. More often than not, these are Maltese who’ve left their homeland to pursue their ambitions abroad. These are people who’ve often made their mark in their new bases, and have a cultural and creative talent worth celebrating. We ask what makes them tick, why they left and what they miss about Malta.

In this first article, we feature Lisa Falzon, a 26-year old Maltese artist who is currently based in Ireland. She moved there two years ago and lived in France for a year before that. Besides creating personal works and illustration pieces, Lisa also writes. Her first novel was published by Merlin, in Malta, and is called ‘Xi Mkien Iehor’. She also writes micro-fiction, which she publishes online. Lisa runs an online gallery, as well as her blog and has an online art shop on the international website for handmade goods, Etsy.

Why do you paint?
All children paint. In my case, people seemed to catch on early that I had a special interest in it. I recall aged four, being fussed over by a kindergarten teacher for my drawing of ’six snails’. It kind of then clicked in my head that drawing was something special, and it made me want to draw more and more. I was lucky to have a creative family – both my parents were imaginative and created in several different fields, from watercolours to pottery.

I was sent to art lessons when I was about ten years old, but they didn’t go down too well with me. I liked to do my own thing and listen to music or space out when I draw. I stopped going for lessons before I got my Art O level and went on to study sciences at school. I may not have painted every day after that but I was doing something creative every day, be it building something out of a shoebox, binding a ‘book’, making up stories with my brother and sister. All this worked instead of ‘art education’. It was ‘imagination education’. Ultimately I never studied art technique properly, through lessons – but I learnt a lot through my voracious love of art history.

I had my first exhibition at 16, my biggest solo exhibition at age 22 at St James Cavalier, and then a small exhibition in Paris, after I moved. In Paris, the tininess of my apartment made me shun the cumbersome easel and I naturally delved into the world of digital art. Three years later and I am still in love with the medium. I feel I can express myself digitally best of all. The process does not require extensive planning as you can move elements around, so I never get stuck with a composition I dislike half way, the way I used to while painting on canvas. I can focus completely on developing a story. I opened my own print shop and sell unique items of wearable art online. The business took off in just a year, so I am now able to pursue it exclusively. I love that I have a job that allows me flexible hours, free time and I do not have to meet people every day. This is what I would do, even if I didn’t need a job.

Why do you write a blog?
I guess there is an element of narcism in keeping a blog and some arrogance associated with the assumption that people want to know details about your life. (Twitter is an even more narcistic medium as it assumes people want to know moment-to-moment, 140-character updates of your life!)

But hand-on-heart, I run a blog is mainly as a business tool. These days, most artists have a blog. It allows potential clients (like publishers) to get to know a bit about you. It’s also a way in which to keep followers of your art informed of your progress. It is a better way of making a connection online than a simple online portfolio. The web has become informal, and online portfolios of the past feel a bit passé. In my case, running an online art business, the blog allows me to announce new items. It’s basically a personal podium. Used wisely, a blog can be a great aid to any artist.

Describe your painting in a sentence.
My paintings are stories in picture-form. Art is an important medium of self expression for me. I tell stories and ideas with my art. I like original ideas, unusual situations, twists and a dash of dark humour. Sometimes they are ideas I didn’t even know I wanted to express in the first place… so I find myself in my paintings too. I guess I paint because I need a way in which to let loose these ideas… it is the same reason I write.

Warhol, Picasso or Botticelli?
I am not a big fan of Warhol, or Picasso… so it’s Boticelli. I dislike Warhol because he is a little too ‘Pop’ for me. And I dislike Picasso because he created a slew of imitators which is why we still have ‘cubists’ to this day. I actually joke a bit here. I appreciate both artists for what they did. In the pyramid of art history, they fit and make sense (though they tried hard not to, I think). I am fond of Picasso’s ‘blue period’ work.

I love figurative and representational art. My favourites involve realism, a sense of drama and something a little surreal. I love the pre-Raphaelites with their staged settings yet hyper-real landscapes. I like Renaissance art, and Flemish art. I adore Vermeer, Bronzino, Holbein. I couldn’t name all my favourite artists. I’d never stop! I tend to reference art history a lot in my paintings. Having said this, I do keep an eye on trend and love to get inspiration from the contemporary art scene – anything from High Fashion to a trend in book covers, to TV ads can trigger my imagination.

What do you miss about Malta?
My family, and sometimes pastizzi.

Do artists have to necessarily exile themselves from Malta?
No not at all – I could do what I am doing in Malta. I make all my connections online. I have currently an exhibition of my digital works planned for a gallery in California, and there’s one at the moment in Queensland, Australia. I conducted all of the dealings for these online. Same goes for my shop, I sell and post out the items – all I need is the post office, and my computer and internet and my graphics tablet and Photoshop, and I’m good to go. I could technically do this from an island in the middle of nowhere provided I had all these things. My choice to live away from Malta was simply based on my desire to live somewhere less crowded, with more countryside. I now have a forest on my doorstep so it’s good.

Tell me a story about one of your paintings.
Some of my paintings are accompanied by an actual story – but these are not in the majority. I usually restrain myself to a snippet or couple of phrases of description, to push the viewer into my intended direction yet let them make it out by themselves. One of my favourite creations is ‘the constant gardener’, a digital collage. My tag-line, or story for it, was ‘He loved her, even when it hurt.’ I think it is self-explanatory enough. I allow the painting to deliver the mood.

What should we have really asked you?
What advice do you have for aspiring young artists? The best thing to do if you are going to do it solo (without attending an art school abroad) is to become involved in free online artist communities – like DeviantArt – and submit your art, and become involved in the art scene. This is a valuable learning step and lots of fun. Also invest in art books – not the ‘how to paint’ kind, but the ones with art master paintings, and observe them. There are online sites that are basically museums – like www.artrenewal.org is a goldmine of paintings from old masters. I think observing paintings is so important for passively learning the rules of composition and colour.

Also, stop making excuses and being your own worst enemy! I meet so many artists who go ‘but but but,’ and are ready to excuse why they aren’t drawing, or why they have let their skills rot. Many young, would-be artists I meet complain that they don’t have this or that opportunity – lack of funding for art school/lessons is often brought up – but I’m proof that you don’t need to go to art school to produce and sell artwork and work as an illustrator.

No. 68, the Valletta art gallery that keeps on surprising us, is running an exhibition examining ‘The Life Model’. Subtitled ‘Between Nude and Naked’, the exhibition features seven artists who cover different genre of visual art. It runs until 31 July to coincide with the Malta Arts Festival.

The No 68 programme describes the nude “as a conceptual and artistic category, always involved the notion of an ideal abstracted from the reality we confront in our everyday lives”. The objective of this exhibition is “to engage the audience in public debate and look at the history of our acceptance of nudity and on the bareness of the naked body and how this can sum up everything to which we aspire and everything we most fear”.

So, be a voyeur, visit No. 68 while you can, and size up your own body and ideals, fears and fantasies against the artistic interpretations you find there.

Participating Artists:
Vince Briffa (Malta)
Antony Calleja (Malta)
Jeni Caruana (Malta)
Patrick Dalli (Malta)
Alexandra Pace (Malta)
Astrid Steinbrecher (Germany)
Zygimantas Augustinas (Lithuania)

Artist Patrick J. Fenech is curator for “The Life Model”.

Exhibition runs: 3 – 31 July 09
No. 68, St Lucy Street, Valletta
Monday to Friday – 10am to 1pm & 2pm to 6pm
Saturday and Sunday -10am to 1pm
Admission: Free

See also: No. 68 blog.

There’s one more week to catch a highly-intriguing group exhibition of video entitled ‘The World Next Door’ at Malta Contemporary Art (MCA) in Marsa. The exhibition, curated by exhibitor Ruth Bianco (Malta), hosts works also by artists from Palestine, Greece, India, UK, Canada, Philippines and Turkey.

Ruth Bianco explains the reasoning behind the theme and the chosen works and artists:

“The idea for this exhibition grew out of a continuing interest with the “notion of territory”. The participants are all artists I’ve met on my travels while they themselves were “away from home”, engaged in fine art research. It is within this ongoing context of interrogation and travel that I would like to introduce the works in this joint exhibition. This implies that the work is contextually fluid and nomadic – open-ended, questioning journeys, rather than closures. The show, therefore, is “a-topic” in that the works resist fixture and examine “territory” through temporality.”

The exhibition runs until 28 June at: MCA, 8 Off Racecourse Street, Marsa.

About MCA
MCA is a non-profit cultural organisation founded in October 2008 as Malta’s first art centre focusing entirely on Contemporary Art.

Its main function is that of a public gallery showcasing international and local emerging and established visual artists through a programme of solo and group exhibitions curated by MCA and invited professionals.
A series of talks and fora in related fields as well as a programme of artist films and independent documentary has been set up. An education programme, film production house and online journal are in the making.

For more on the exhibition and MCA itself, see:
www.maltacontemporaryart.com
email:info@maltacontemporaryart.com
Facebook: Malta Contemporary Art

Photo: Still of video by exhibitor Leah Dector (Canada).

If you’re planning to visit Valletta as part of your holiday itinerary, you’d do well to include a visit to what is arguably the islands’ cultural hub: the St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity, housed in, but seemingly ‘hewn out’ of one of the fortress bastions straddling Valletta’s city gate.

The building’s renovation and conversion from gloomy vaulted bastion into a vast contemporary, cultural centre with open spaces and light was the work of leading Maltese architect Richard England. Love the conversion or hate it, the centre has proved a very valuable space in Malta for all things cultural and arty; so much so that most of us can’t imagine where some events were held before. Launched in 2000, the centre was created to support the contemporary creative culture. Simply by arriving on the scene, the centre has expanded the range and often quality of arts’ events in Malta.

It manages to house, in an intimate atmosphere despite the building’s size, an array of exhibition areas, a cinema, a theatre in the round and a music room, along with its Inspirations café with al fresco patio, and a fine dining restaurant. Both eateries are very popular and not just with those attending events.

This place has become a one-stop-shop for operas, plays, musicals, exhibitions of contemporary pieces as well as past masters, classical and popular concerts and recitals. It holds a wealth of activities aimed at kids, including a regular Saturday club offering crafts, drama, story-telling and more. St James’ cinema shows some of the finest contemporary films as well as numerous foreign language films generally not screened at the popular cinemas. It’s a great place to catch up on films you missed first time round; you’re usually guaranteed a quiet auditorium without rustling wrappers and fidgets!

Apart from its creative pull, St James’ attracts too for its history. The building is, in fact, a feat of military architecture. Designed in 1569 by the Knights of St John, its original purpose was to provide raised gun-platforms to counteract land attacks. Since then, the fortified building has been used as a food store by the British Armed Forces, and later to house a government printing press. All this, before it underwent it last conversion to the centre for creativity.

For its calendar of events, check the St James’ Cavalier website.

As I write, you’ve one more week to catch ‘Illuminaria’, a fascinating photographic exhibition at hip art venue No. 68, tucked away down St Lucy Street in Valletta. It runs till 15 May, so hurry.

I was lucky enough to go to the busy opening evening and chat with the photographers; though you’ll have more luck now in seeing the photographs in peace. But the crowds at the opening evening showed just how popular an art form photography is in Malta, for both practitioners and viewers.

Illuminaria brings together 24 highly-individual, local photographers. What makes this event unusual is the juxtaposition of works by professional and award-winning photographers alongside those of relative newcomers.

The exhibition curator is Kevin Casha, one of Malta’s foremost photographers. Most of those taking part are current or former students of his; he came up with the idea of a collective exhibition as a way to encourage the participants to ‘go up a gear and take the plunge to exhibit their work’.

The majority are showing their works for the first time in public, so the exhibition is characterised by a fresh, unshackled approach, which, says Casha, “is many a time an eye opener and reminder to seasoned professionals to keep striving to be innovative, creative and artistic”. All works have been selected for their originality, with not a hackneyed shot in sight.

Illuminaria – from Light to Print – at No. 68, St Lucy Street, Valletta.
Exhibition open: Friday,1 May – Friday, 15 May
Viewing Times: Mornings 10.30 am – 1.30 pm
Evenings 4.00 pm – 8.00 pm (Monday – Friday only)

For further information, contact: Kevin Casha or Amanda Holmes.

If you are passionate about the visual arts, you might find it hard to locate some of Malta’s talent, especially if what you’re looking for is modern or alternative forms of expression. St James Cavalier might be the place to start, but one, government-backed venue is not enough when it comes to the self expression of a whole country’s artists.

This is where the Valletta house, known simply as No. 68, comes in. The aim of No. 68 is to “host artistic and cultural events and to give exposure to artists, both emerging as well as established names”.

Located in secluded St Lucy’s Street, Valletta, this gem of an artistic venue is an old house, lovingly restored and brought back to life by Alexandra Pace, one of Malta’s foremost photographers. The house belonged to her grandparents, but for decades it lay unoccupied, until, in October 2008, Alexandra was looking for a special place to host her solo photographic exhibition. Now, No. 68 is a prime venue in what is fast-becoming one of Valletta’s hippest streets for the insider crowd.

What Alexandra has done is admirable; she made sure that the renovation mirrored the original structure and decor. Wall colours were kept the same, tiles were scrubbed down until their true beauty flourished, the wrought-iron fire places were brought back to life and a few pieces of old furniture were restored and now lie scattered around the house to remind everyone of the history of this magnificent place.

Probably the most alluring of all rooms in this four storey building is the ‘pink bathroom’, a symmetrical, spacious room with black hexagon tiles and pink fittings. The rest of the house has been left unfilled, but during exhibitions it is endowed with art and installations. The style screams minimalism, but it marries perfectly with the character of the house, in which old merges with new.

No. 68 also hosts Kinemastik, an alternative film club, which takes place every week in one of the larger rooms. These kind of initiatives prove that the No. 68 project has the potential to be the hub for a whole spectrum of visual arts.

No. 68 is an art gallery with a heart, and its own identity. Check No. 68’s blog for information on upcoming events. If you have the opportunity to visit No 68, I’m sure you won’t leave disappointed.

The latest exhibition, ‘Illuminaria’, opens this weekend, and runs until 15 May. It showcases works by new, upcoming photographers. Coverage coming soon on MaltaInsideOut.