Malta takes a ‘cavalier’ approach to art

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Sarah Lawson discovers how a structure built to defend the city of Valleta, Malta, is now used for displaying art

In Malta ‘cavalier’ is not so much a dashing fellow in a plumed hat as a massive defensive structure dating from the 16th century. There are two, named after St James and St John, at the entrance of the walled city of Valletta, built to deter a long-ago Turkish attack. In more peaceful times St James Cavalier underwent many changes, and the British even added two huge cisterns for water storage.

The structure has now taken on a new lease on life as a Centre for Creativity. For this millennium project, the architect Richard England and the restoration expert Michael Ellal converted the two water cisterns into a light atrium and a theatre space. The designers rejected any attempt to imitate antiquity, and so if it looks old it is old, but other aspects, such as glass panels and a cantilevered stairway, are resolutely contemporary. A long barrel-vaulted stairway leads to an upper level, and other rooms open out from corridors. Besides exhibition space and a restaurant, the old fortification offers film festivals, rehearsal space, live broadcasts from the National theatre in London, and a lunchtime concert series.

Earlier in 2014 two exhibitions were held there that deserve notice.

Emanuel Bonnici had three rooms and a corridor on the upper level to display several rather arresting objects in an exhibition called ‘Eccentricks’, curated by Dr Vince Briffa. The first to meet the eye was a red phone box – as familiar in Malta as it is in Britain – bent into an unlikely shape. The phone box, in wood, paint, and Perspex, is called simply 356, which is the international telephone prefix for Malta. Bonnici’s pieces are immediate and amusing or thought provoking. Another striking piece, called ‘(f)Lush’  is a lavatory (wood, fibre, and paint). It is several times larger than a normal one, and the bowl is the prow of the distinctive Maltese luzzu, the brightly coloured fishing boat to be seen in harbours around the island. The object is too large for a lavatory and too small for a luzzu, but somewhere in the disconcerting middle.

When I was looking at it, a little group of local gallery-goers wanted me to be sure to notice that the inside of the ‘toilet bowl’ duplicated the authentic structure of a fishing boat with ribs rising from the keel to the gunwales. They wanted me to be sure to get the joke. To add a certain wacky verisimilitude there was an outsized roll of ‘toilet paper’ beside this construct.

Downstairs in this extraordinary building was a group exhibition by nine talented Maltese artists in various media, curated by Fabrizio Mifsud Bonnici. They were: Marisa Attard, Saviour Baldacchino, Steve Bonello, Andrew Diacono, Caruana Dingli, Debbi Paul Scerri, Mark Scicluna, Kenneth Zammit Tabona, and Moira Zahra.

Their exhibition was called ‘Xebgha Nies’, which translates as ‘Different People’ or ‘Many People’, and that is a fair if laconic summing-up of their work. Taken together, their people range from St Sebastian to piano players to flying witches to a chap with keys protruding from his body (rather like St Sebastian again) to people waiting to cross the street, one of them with his large pet wood louse or similar on a leash. Some of these people conjured up by the artists you might like to meet and some most definitely not.

All nine depict the human figure in interesting ways – mostly exaggerated caricatures to one degree or another: plump torsos on pipe-stem legs, elongated figures, round faces with opaque expression, variations on traditional religious motifs. The images range from the humorous and fanciful to the sinister and nightmarish.

A few particularly caught my eye. Saviour Baldacchino’s work concerns religious themes and explores what you can do with the human face before it becomes unrecognizable as such. His Breasts of Agatha (oil on canvas) depicts three leering torturers about to cut off the martyr’s breasts with shears. The three men have misshapen heads and bulging eyes; every plane and feature of their faces is distorted to the limit. St Agatha, in contrast, is a beautiful young woman. (St Agatha, an early Christian martyr from Sicily, is the patron saint of Malta.)

Debbi Caruana Dingli deals in scenes of witches in pointy hats that struck me as nightmarish but somewhat jokey, too. Grotesque caricatures are also the stock in trade of Mark Scicluna, in his nine small ink, gouache and watercolour pictures. Paul Scerri explored keys and variations on the upper torso with a certain wit: one of his pieces is called A Taxidermist’s Dream: Stuff Them All Before Extinction.

Marisa Attard wittily reinterprets the term ‘bar code’ by transferring it to a drinks lounge where four customers sit at a ‘bar’ with its variable stripes. One has a cat (or it could be a lemur) on his shoulder and they are looking out at us, perhaps about to order another cocktail.

Steve Bonello provokes a chuckle with his Imbeciles sans Frontières (pen and ink), a group portrait of cartoonish men, presumably ‘world leaders’ although not quite recognizable.

Moira Zahra’s Downtown has a smart lady in a red coat and umbrella in an otherwise monochrome street scene out walking her tame praying mantis, as one does. The mantis is black and the size of a greyhound; its spindly appendages repeat the very thin arms and legs of its mistress, and her elongated face matches that of her pet. Another of Zahra’s pictures, Five p.m. depicts a man riding a penny-farthing with an immense bee or wasp protruding from his backpack.

The same vehicle turns up again in Andrew Diacono’s Man on Penny Farthing, a sculptural piece in mixed media. His Guitarist (oils on wood) is a distinctive figure bent over his blue guitar, but not really an homage to Picasso. Musical instruments are a theme that Kenneth Zammit Tabona chooses with his Bach Chaconne. Some of his other pictures feature religious processions, a crowded tearoom, and acrobats.

It’s not a simple matter to sum up this exhibition with its insects and musical instruments, witches and penny-farthings, but there is generally an easy and attractive surrealism and absurdity in many of the works, with their droll juxtapositions and uneasy images.

Whatever else is going on, should you visit Malta, it will be well worth your time to drop into St James Cavalier and see what’s happening. Allow plenty of time.