TerraeMultidisciplinary contemporary artist Victor Agius will be presenting a collection of ceramic sculptures, paintings and drawings titled Terrae at Iniala5 Galleries in Valletta from Wednesday to May 2.
Linked together through the material of clay, perhaps the most significant geological element to the artist’s home island of Gozo, the works offer an overview of Agius’s artistic development over the past years.
Working from his studio in Xagħra that goes by the same name, Agius is directly influenced by the proximity of the Ġġantija Temples and the Xagħra Stone Circle. Red ochre, the iron-rich bright red soil used during prehistoric burial rituals, often crops up as one of the materials in the artist’s pieces.
Themes around the rituals of life, death and regeneration inherent to these sites are also central to the artist’s work as it reflects on the duality and discomfort of man being both part of nature and its consumer, putting his own future existence into question.
Ricordi ancestraliAgius applies his skill through more than one medium, exploring the qualities and opportunities inherent in the material he himself collects from various sites across Gozo.
Incorporating this in his ceramics, Agius carries out ongoing research into the peculiarities of local clay, test-firing differently-prepared samples to find their limits and possible uses.
Ceramic works from ongoing series Mother and Genesis form the body of the exhibition. These abstract pieces portray a beautiful, rough wilderness that belies the amount of study and experimentation that goes into each sculpture.
The exhibition will give a glimpse into the artist’s process of creation through the inclusion of some works on paper. These are conceptual studies that then lead to the creation of ceramic sculptures, using both drawing and the application of soil and clay.
Local soil, clay and sand also feature in Aguis’s large-scale paintings and collages that often also include found objects, roots and twigs. Together they create a graphic map of the aesthetic inherent to the Gozo locations they were extracted from, pointing to the sacredness of the earth and presenting matter in its pure form with minimal human intervention. The paintings also create a longer-lasting memorial to sites that have since perished due to urbanisation and other changes made by man.
Victor AgiusA few of the pieces included in this exhibition were displayed during the two-hour installation/performance from the Ġġantija Project in 2013.
Admission to the exhibition at Iniala5 Galleries in Old Treasury Street, Valletta, is free. Opening times are from Monday to Friday between 10am and 2pm and from 4 to 7pm. On Saturday, the exhibition is open from 10am to 2pm. For more information, visit www.victoragius.com.