As an established ceramic artist now at the height of his maturity, Joseph Agius has given rise to an overwhelmingly monochromatic oeuvre.

Since his early days as a budding student, he has delved into the properties of a medium whose possibilities as a decorative one are endless. It lends itself to embellishment as the glazes open the floodgates to fantastic colours.

Modern SlaveryModern Slavery

Sometimes, these will camouflage and get in the way of an intended message. 

Metaphors are part and parcel of the world of the 51-year-old ceramist. His profession as a nurse exposes him to a monochromatic world of pain, disease, despair and death.

There is space for hope, too, as patients recover and go back home to their lives. Art is a delivery of sorts for Agius, a catharsis after a day in the wards tending to people who are in need of attention, care and words of solace. 

However, painting pretty pictures is something that is far removed from Agius’s world. Mass communication rejoices in news from war-torn countries concerning acts of genocide and terrorism.

Good news seems to be no longer newsworthy, unless one finds some escape in the mundane which floods social media with inanities. Agius isn’t immune to all of this.

The famous American sculptor Louise Nevelson (1899-1988) similarly ditched colour in favour of black, white and occasionally gold.

She worked with found objects in the shape of wooden artefacts, incorporating them as elements in her sculptural friezes. This somehow visually recalls the Maltese artist’s ceramic reliefs.

Both artists’ works tend to compartmentalise and divide space in a series of finite areas or little worlds that narrate part of a story.

One can look at them singularly as individual chapters. In Agius’ case the title of the piece, usually a metaphor, brings them together and declares an outcome.

This collection of ceramics, exhibited at Ala Gallery in Carini Street, Santa Venera, demonstrates the Maltese artist’s pragmatic rejection of colour.

It mirrors his outlook on a contemporary world in which evil apparently gets the upper hand over good, and where a bleak future progressively looks like a foregone conclusion. Global warming, genocide, scandal, corruption, famine, water shortage, meteorological extremes and wars are like horsemen of the apocalypse, heralding Armageddon.

Other horsemen seem to have joined the purported four of the New Testament.

Mouth Zipped represents humanity as being made up of monochromatic, comatose individuals that mesh together as a contemporary society. The composition is weblike, with torsos and limbs intricately bound to each other.

There is a basic semblance of communication which is not of the vocal kind, as that is prohibited. The zip runs through the mouths of this micro-society that does not contradict or rebel. Dissent is abolished in favour of ‘the common good’.  

The Dharma Wheel, universally acknowledged as the symbol of Buddhism, is evoked in Harmony at Work. The individual components of this Buddhist symbol are three: the hub, the rim and the spokes.

The earthiness of his ceramics evokes a sense of sorrow, loss and a spectrum of other human emotions

The circular form of the piece, rather like a heliocentric model of the cosmos, represents wholeness and perfection. The spokes maintain its form and act as communicants between the inner hub and the outer rim.   

Destroying Evidence of Committed Genocide has a rather straightforward interpretation. A rolling pin, metaphorically representing a revisionist perspective, seeks to knead out the bumps of unsavoury episodes and present an altered reality to suit a political agenda. Despots relish the silence of the masses, which they manipulate and misinform with what today is known as fake news.

Harmony at WorkHarmony at Work

Lines become blurred as truth and falsehood become bedfellows and history is manipulated. A clean slate erases uncomfortable symbols and signs that are problematic to a rehashed dogma.

Denying and rubbishing claims that millions were slaughtered, multitudes displaced and societies annihilated is an attempt to bleach statistics and belittle the evidence of bodily counts.

The humanoid pattern in this powerful sculpture evokes lifeless bodies in concentration camps. The rolling pin obliterates all evidence of death and inhuman behaviour, introducing a virginal and unspoilt landscape that can be repurposed into new furnaces and graveyards. Amnesia has always been the enemy of historical fact.

Joseph Agius occasionally uses traditional gothic iconography – as in Modern Slavery – to poignantly represent a contemporary ‘sainthood’. This piece is a hagiographical comment on a spineless society that idolises dubious role models and elevates them to a communion of saints.

These false divinities feed on the hero worship of an enslaved audience, causing further compartmentalisation of society into ‘niches’ of different hierarchical importance.

Nowadays footballers, reality TV personalities and political demagogues have overthrown the medieval saints from the most outstanding of niches. 

Identity is an artwork which asks a lot of questions. What defines an individual? What makes a person different from anyone else?

Is it a collection of idiosyncratic characteristics found on an identity card that can be deemed unique to the holder of that document?

Perhaps a number that could be indicative of the chronology of births in a particular year?

The date of birth, the address of one’s house, the dates of issue and expiry, and the gender of the holder – all that information is contained in 46.75 square centimetres of two-dimensional space.

One can only wonder what genetic information a single strand of DNA contains in its curls and folds. We have 92 of those, two on each of the 46 chromosomes that define us as belonging to the human species of animals.

Identity is a community of humanoid individuals lumped together. All of them can be identified, perhaps erroneously, as belonging to the same species. They all have a head, torso and an indication of lower limbs which dangle limply and suggest the lifelessness of hanged men.

The chain which attaches the whole group like a noose to a nail on a wall hints slightly at the double helix of a DNA strand.

The almost concentric rings that are imprinted into the fabric of the monochrome sculpture might remind one of a fingerprint, which is also testimony to one’s identity.  It might as well be an artistic statement that Agius has thrown the gauntlet in the face of criticism, declaring himself as the ‘culprit’ of the work in question. 

Nevelson had claimed that: “In my own work, I think there is a beyondness, some call it mystery. It contains the awareness of love, or sorrow, all the human emotions.”

 In spite of everything, Agius similarly believes that hope is an ingredient of the human condition. However, unlike the American sculptor, he does not use gold – the universal colour of hope – to portray this.

The earthiness of his ceramics evokes a sense of sorrow, loss and a spectrum of other human emotions, among which hope and love can also be sensed.

For clarity’s sake, the writer and the artist share a common name, but are different people. For a private viewing, one can contact the artist via email on josephagius@gmail.com.

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