Past! Present. Future? (book)/Cluster 5

The Fondazzjoni Kreattività Art Collection does not have an official thematic strand to guide its acquisitions, other than the direct association with exhibitions held within the St James Cavalier building. Art historians and curators tend to look for themes in collections, regardless. In some ways, the clustering of the collection into the sections found here is one such attempt. Organising themed exhibitions with works from the collection, such as the Art+Feminism series or Id-Dinja M’Għadiex Ċatta / The World is No Longer Flat (Luxembourg, 2018), is another. Through a long standing working relationship with the artist Gabriel Caruana (1929–2018), the organisation has come to appreciate the legacy of his work, well beyond his direct dealings with the Foundation. Caruana is best known for his ceramic works. However, we have also grown to appreciate his non-ceramic works. The only work in the Fondazzjoni Kreattività collection by Gabriel Caruana is precisely one such work. The technique used in this piece is grog - ground bisque fired clay added to a clay body to make it rough and then fired again. Its application onto wood gives this work of art a unique quality to treasure in the collection. So much so that it is exhibited permanently within St James Cavalier, the historic building where Fondazzjoni Kreattività is based. Through Caruana, the organisation has developed a greater appreciation of a number of artists working within the same ethos that he imbued throughout his career, and most especially at The Mill Art, Culture and Crafts Centre in Birkirkara, which he established with his wife Mary Rose in 1990 after restoring the old Ta’ Ganu Windmill with the help of Richard England, among others. Incidentally, both Gabriel and Mary Rose were among the many artists featured in the St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity inaugural exhibition in 2000 Art in Malta Today. Looking at works in the Fondazzjoni Kreattività Art Collection leads to a number of ceramic works, which certainly expand the milieu that he established. For example, the 1993 ceramic work by the British artist Zell Osbourne entered the collection in 2004, following an exhibition at the St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity, around the same time that she led workshops in pottery and ceramic techniques. Caruana’s work with modern ceramics had prepared audiences in Malta for this type of aesthetic many years earlier. This is most evident not only in his own work but also in that of other artists who started out working with him at the Targa Gap School Studio. This is where Sina Farrugia started her artistic career. She was among the first artists to exhibit at what was then known as the St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity. Her exhibition Mirkeba in 2002 should also be considered in light of others by Isabelle Borg, Debbie Caruana Dingli, Anna Grima, Jean Zaleski and other, clearly indicating a shift in the gender gap that’s evident in the local art scene in previous times. Other than the vibrant colours that strike you as soon as you look at Farrugia’s work in the Foundation’s collection, this ceramic work is distinctive in its femininity. Farrugia is now seen as a pioneer in presenting such imagery on the art scene in Malta at the turn of the century. When Gabriel Caruana retired in the 1990s, the Targa Gap School Studio was led by another one of his protegès. Tony Briffa was among the first to move beyond the ceramic techniques acquired from the master. This much is evident from the work that entered the Fondazzjoni Kreattività collection, which was created by Briffa in Denmark and first exhibited during his solo exhibition entitled Re-Collection at Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta in 2016. When Briffa moved permanently from Malta to Denmark, another former student of Gabriel Caruana took over the Targa Gap School Studio. George Muscat has exhibited his ceramics at the St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity multiple times. A pair of plates he donated to the collection in 2013 from his exhibition Forces provide useful contrast for another pair of plates in the Fondazzjoni Kreattività Art Collection. Victor Agius has produced several plates over the years, along with his large-scale works. After a rather dark patch in his career in 2017, Spazju Kreattiv presented his exhibition Consume. These plates are a token from that exhibition, highlighting the plight of contemporary Maltese artists to get their work appreciated more broadly by the public in Malta. Another contemporary artist who has shared this struggle with Agius is Enrique Tabone, whose medium of choice is plexiglass. Her Naħla was commissioned for the Valletta International Visual Art (VIVA) festival in 2017, following her large-scale Valletta 2018 commission Mewweġ, installed at BirguFest in Vittoriosa. As in the case of Agius’ work that survives only in its remains following its controversial removal from its original installation site, Tabone’s work has similarly suffered from the under-developed appreciation of large-scale contemporary art installations by the largely traditional cultural sector in the country. The pieces that remain in the Fondazzjoni Kreattività Art Collection from Tabone’s 2017 installation, now called X’Fadal minn Naħla has been turned into a work of art in its own right rather than fragments off the larger installation from which it originated.

Gabriel Caruana is rightly seen in some quarters as a forebearer of the contemporary art scene in Malta on a number of levels. The works clustered here are accidental aspects of his legacy. The trajectories afforded by this creative lineage are most evident in the works that are clearly produced beyond his aesthetic, often transcending the politics that other, more contemporary, artists frequently engage with as an essential component of their work in the broader contexts within which they are produced.