Very few people like seeing cranes. Cranes are the harbingers of construction and noise, and most people see cranes like Donald Trump sees public tax returns: something to stay away from. 

However, one Maltese artist has decided to take cranes head-on; as long as that head is connected to a really, really long neck.

‘I’ve wanted to turn these cranes into giraffes for yonks now,” says Twitch, one of Malta’s foremost street artists. 

“The first giraffe will hopefully be ready by the 25th of March but the weather is not exactly on my side – rain and wind are factors that I can’t work with since the crane is over 60 meters high,” he said. 

Twitch has made waves in the past with some of his cutting political work, but to anyone who knows the man, his dream has always been to turn the ugly eyesores that cranes are into, well, giraffes.

And the first crane to finally receive the giraffe treatment is situated at Dock 6 in the Palumbo shipyard in Cospicua. 

“It’s the biggest crane in the dock,” says Twitch. “It is commissioned by the Valletta Foundation for the exhibition entitled ‘Dal-Bahar Madwarha/The Island Is What The Sea Surrounds’ which opens on the 25th of March.”

Twitch has been working mostly at night to complete the giraffe-cranes by the artistic launch in May. While he is starting with the largest crane in the shipyard, he is hoping to be able to create more giraffe-cranes, all with their unique patterns.

“I’m going to start with this one. It’s the biggest one so I gave it more of a male kind of pattern since male giraffes are bigger in nature, and have darker spots,” ends Twitch. “I also used the Kordofan giraffes as a reference – they’re the most endangered giraffe species due to their habitat being in a war-torn part of Africa.”

Dal-Bahar Madwarha opens on the 25th March with site-specific installations at Pixkerija, the Underground Cisterns in Valletta running until July and St. Elmo’s Examination Centre which closes in mid-May.

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Johnathan Cilia

Johnathan is an award-winning Maltese journalist interested in social justice, politics, minority issues, music and food. Follow him at @supreofficialmt on Instagram, and send him news, food and music stories at [email protected]