This exhibition at Jo Borg Gallery is open to the public from October 2023 to February 2024 and offers a remarkable paradox of creation and destruction, through chromatic spatial bodies tainted with a myth that challenges conventional perception and verges on the cumbersome. Grech and Camilleri become visual narrators of present-day conflicts, accounts of sisterhood, and the inescapable nature of fate. Their artwork invites us to explore the interplay between matter, materiality and artistic intention and contemplate the hidden truths within their work.
Concurrently, Camilleri’s most recent work, ‘Scoria’, serves as an elegy to what remains post apocalypse. It embodies her repetitive and controlled process of application and removal of material, condensing matter to its essence. According to Camilleri, this piece represents what remains and survives. It poses questions about what is left when a land is stripped bare of its inhabitants, or when a place is transformed into an anonymous space. Ultimately, what remains is the here and now, the essence of what is meant to stay.
In the past two decades, Grech’s sculptural work was predominantly in cast concrete (Argos, Cottonera Waterfront, 2007), however, his more recent creations are characterised by vibrant polychromatic ceramic pieces that Grech defines as an extension of his paintings; ‘chromatic spatial bodies’ that pay tribute to his mentor, the German painter, Gotthard Graubner. With meticulous attention to detail, Grech explores the alchemy of vitreous glazes and pigments, vitalising his porcelain and stoneware forms. This exploration of materials is evident in his ‘L-annimal’ Series and the ‘Seven Sisters’ Series, as the artist struggles to wed materiality to the sublime.
Materiality is also a predominant characteristic of Camilleri’s practice that stems from experimental printmaking processes, pushed at the verge of the painting realm. This is evident in the three monotypes showcased in the entrance of the gallery, the ‘Spatia Series’ that were initially exhibited in Berlin in 2020. Opposite these monotypes hangs ‘Moirai’, an abstract interpretation of the Sisters of Fate – Clotho, Lachelis, and Atropos – who collectively weave the threads of destiny from birth to death. Camilleri builds layers of tones, alternating between velvety blackness and a cold, bluish-white light, stained symbolically with red ochre scars. Adjacent to this piece stands ‘Ochra et Nigreos V’, another mixed media painting from a body of works created during her artist-in-residence programme in 2021. Camilleri’s playful approach to materials and controlled sensitivity to colour witness her concern to capture illusions of infinite space and depth.
This exhibition at Jo Borg Gallery is open to the public from October 2023 to February 2024 and offers a remarkable paradox of creation and destruction, through chromatic spatial bodies tainted with a myth that challenges conventional perception and verges on the cumbersome. Grech and Camilleri become visual narrators of present-day conflicts, accounts of sisterhood, and the inescapable nature of fate. Their artwork invites us to explore the interplay between matter, materiality and artistic intention and contemplate the hidden truths within their work.
Jo Borg Gallery 