The Gabriel Caruana Foundation’s SPRING Artistic Programme 2022 to 2024 is hosting its first collective exhibition, which launched on 7th July at The Mill, Birkirkara – and it’s the last week to view it!

The exhibition, entitled Beneath the Surface, features new works by Samuel Ciantar, Sarah Chircop and Isaac Warrington. Beneath the Surface is conceptually developed and curated by Co-Creative Director and Curator Elyse Tonna.

Tonna explains that “collectively and separately the artists have unfolded different meanings and associations to the acts of resistance, resilience and rebellion”.

“Within the exhibition, the surface takes on a metaphorical meaning and transforms itself into an opportunity for investigation across various happenings, most often beyond our control.”

Samuel Ciantar (b.1997) is an emerging artist with an academic background in architecture.

His artistic practice is concerned with alternative ways of being and interacting with our environment, drawing insight from the relationship between humans, objects and spaces.

Ciantar reveals that his “research often explores forgotten knowledge and ecological processes”. Ciantar believes that in our modern world, we have become disconnected from the natural  environment around us, and as such lost touch with more intangible forces that impact us.

By delving into past ways of thinking and reconsidering systems that underpin our planet, he probes at constructing new perspectives for our anthropocentric age.

Sarah Chircop (b.1993) has worked within the creative and cultural sectors for the past eight years.

She is from and based in Malta and has collaborated, led and supported visual art projects, taking on various roles as curator, coordinator, writer, researcher, editor and maker.

She graduated from the University of Malta with a Masters of Arts in History of Art and has since attended a number of courses, workshops and residencies relating to writing and image making. Chircop has shared that her “work investigates the relationship between absence and presence, the self and the other, the image and the mirror, bringing forth questions of reflection and refraction”.

Isaac Warrington, an artist and art educator, obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art at MCAST and further pursued advanced studies in philosophy, psychology and environmental science.

He is currently carrying out a postgraduate degree in Art Education at the University of Malta. In his artistic practice, Warrington looks to Ontology (the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being) and Phenomenology (an approach that concentrates on the relationship between consciousness and the objects of direct experience) as starting points for most of his works.

He also adopts a Socratic attitude in relation to how humans interact with the world around them and with each other, particularly with regards to the Maltese context.

In Warrington’s words his “works tend to have a dark and critical nature; with tendencies to portray local existential concepts with an absurdist attitude. At times, my work even appears to be savage, primal and spiritual.”

The SPRING Programme of Emerging Artists by the Gabriel Caruana Foundation is a tailor-made artistic programme which adapts to the opportunities, challenges and needs of artists who are seeking to progress, develop or challenge their practice in different ways.

Through the building of individual and collective relationships with the artists of the programme, Tonna collaborates directly in a year-long process (or longer) of discussions, critical engagement and understanding to develop a public showcase (exhibition and interrelated events), supporting the artists in various ways.

The Exhibition runs from the 7th to the 28th of July at The Mill – Art, Culture and Crafts Centre, Birkirkara.

More information about the Foundation’s artistic programming can be found here https://gabrielcaruanafoundation.org/events/

The SPRING Artistic Programme for Emerging Artists by the Gabriel Caruana Foundation is supported by Arts Council Malta.

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