These artists’ guessing games

‘An Educated Guess’ (held at the Splendid Hotel in Strait Street, Valletta) showcased the latest work from three of Mcast’s graduating Art and Design students.

The large piano installation piece really captured the Splendid’s crumbling interior, a perfect marriage between artwork and gallery space- Peter Farrugia

Visitors were rewarded by an intriguing look at upcoming local talent – unfortunately, extensive roadworks along that section of Strait Street made it difficult to access the Splendid... although the tableau of shattered paving stones, static machinery, and idle workmen was its own introduction to an exhibition that treats themes of Strait Street, and identity.

Sarah Maria Scicluna’s work filled the first room full of whirring machines and large, mechanically produced drawings. As soon as you’ve entered, you can hear Benjamin arguing that the “sphere of authenticity is outside the technical” – the life of a work must be imbued with more than conceptually provocative hints. Perhaps that’s why the clinical work never really jumped out at me, why it never became more than mechanical spiralling on sheets of paper.

It represents the kind of smug solipsism that must be escaped, rather than embraced, a self-referencing of technique that doesn’t fulfil any longing. It’s just like admiring the innards of a computer, or the skeleton of a building that’s slowly climbing out of the ground, piece by iron piece. When we are confronted by a work of art we are confronted by the fabric of traditions in which it is hopelessly enmeshed.

Which is not to say that certain of the works were not accomplished in their own way. Several smaller images, hung over the room’s chimney piece, were quite arresting. They had been worked by the artist and layered over with grease paper to create a sense of depth and density.

With artists around the world returning to the roots of their media, interacting with the world on a personal level, it felt backward-looking to be presented with a room full of mechanisation, a pure expression of art’s “parasitical dependence on ritual” (Benjamin, again). It felt old-fashioned, but not timeless, isolated but not self-sustaining.

Next were Mariam Degiorgio’s five large portraits, in acrylic. They were characters drawn from Strait Street, people who lived or worked there, described in a figurative style.

There was only one portrait of a male subject and he was unique for not looking out at the viewer, instead focused steadily inward, built up in black and grey. The other portraits featured one old "working girl" who had once plied her trade in Strait Street.

What was most provocative about Degiorgio’s portraits of these ex-prostitutes is the directness of their gaze, dominating the exchange between the viewer and viewed.

Mouths open as if to speak, hands clutched together, bodies angled as though ready to topple out of the canvas. Each painting successfully introduced its subject and provided a window into their experience.

Coupled with these paintings were a series of handwritten reminiscences, penned by the women themselves.

One wrote in a childish, rounded hand – another with a deft scrawl – another crossed her T’s high, in simple sophistication. The combination of handwritten intimacy and portraiture, intimacy through the medium of an artist, worked very well thanks to Degiorgio’s obvious affection for these women.

Finally, the work of Kathleen Calleja. The artist sets out to treat themes of flesh in decay, exposed to violent disruption. It reminded me of last year’s Bodies II exhibition held at the Auberge d’Italie – especially Gilbert Calleja’s large canvases of rotting and reconstituted figures.

Kathleen Calleja has taken a different approach, reducing the body to almost talismanic effigies sketch­ed out and presented in isolation on white paper. Bones become jewellery, flesh becomes fabric and the commodification of the human be­ing seems the ultimate violence.

The effect produces a disquieting dissonance, especially after the accomplished character paintings by Degiorgio.

We are not so much left to explore a narrative of brutality and oppression, although Calleja says she is interested in these violated bodies as the “souvenirs” created by “serial killers” – instead the world she creates is fractured and repackaged.

It wasn’t completely successful because the work never lived up to the concept.

The most interesting piece was a large piano, collapsed on one side like a dead insect, with moulds of feet and arms cast in soap jutting out at obscene angles inside the instrument.

That installation piece really captured the Splendid’s crumbling interior, a perfect marriage between artwork and gallery space. Together with a couple of Degiorgio’s paintings, it took the exhibition somewhere interesting and new. It is always a pleasure to see work by upcoming Maltese artists, and these are certainly artists to look out for in future.