Time To Kiss The World Goodbye
2 Giclée prints, each measuring 1.3m x 1m
currently on show till 31st July at The Life Model exhibition at No.68, Valletta
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square – an exhibition organized by No.68 – curated by Pierre Portelli
No.68 is asking all artists to submit works of art that are 10 x 10 inches.
We hope to end up with a gallery full of exquisite works of art, all diverse, all compelling … all square! All accepted work must be either framed or on frame mounted canvas. In any case they must be ready for hanging and the overall size (including frame) must be 10 x 10 inches.
In the case of sculpture, these also have to be 10 x 10 inches and must be prepared for wall mounting. The depth must also be 10 inches.
Participation is absolutely free of charge. All artists are responsible for their own expenses incurred for materials and framing.
No.68 reserves the right to refuse any work if it does not meet the expected standards.
All accepted works must be made available for sale and No.68 will take a 30% commission on all sales made throughout the duration of the exhibition.
The deadline for submissions is 13th March 2009. Late submissions will not be accepted.
Each artist may submit up to three (3) pieces.
To submit your work for this collective exhibition, you must first send digital photographs of the work being submitted to contact@68stlucystreet.com, together with the relevant application form. Opening night of the Square exhibition will be 3rd April 2009 at No.68, St. Lucy Street, Valletta.
The No.68 crew will endeavour to source sponsorship to cover costs of printing of promotional material, such as posters, exhibition invites and exhibition catalogue, as well as to fund opening night expenses.
All media is accepted – painting, photography, illustration, sculpture, etc. as long as it is 10 x 10 inches.
click here to download application form >
click here to download rules >
A four-storey Valletta house that was left uninhabited for the past 30 years has been rehabilitated to accommodate a contemporary photographic exhibition entitled Redprints; it consists of four collections by Alexandra Pace (b. 1977), who also took charge of the restoration and present minimalist set-up of the building.
The photographs – 56 portraits and studies – were shot specifically for this exhibition and all are printed in a limited edition of ten. They were created using medium format and 35mm photographic film.
Walking through the red door, red being synonymous with the exhibition title (not that red features anywhere else in particular, but perhaps will feature in the future in relation to redprints.com which is being launched with this exhibition), one encounters the only collection on the ground floor – the Santa Marija series. They ooze an atmosphere of cool enjoyment which is naturally synonymous with the feast and holiday. However, instead of capturing the usual fireworks and other festa revelry, Pace took her fish-eye lens alternatively to the beach and created lomographic underwater photographs.
The bathers are generally calm yet still in motion, with some suavely making their way through this restricted water world. It is as though a new world has been created where humans are pets relegated to a fishbowl and are made to play. This makes the photographs quite amusing to look at, more so because of the reality of the image. As a consequence, they may make some feel somewhat claustrophobic and cherish the air they’re breathing. This realisation makes the series seem somewhat serious, but looking around again brings back the comic element to it.
The three collections located on the second floor consist solely of black and white photographs. Moreover, in the last two collections, not only has colour disappeared completely, but so have the subtle grey tones that blend the black and white in Boutique. The photographs progressively become more a play of forms, forms inhabited in a bold, contrasting chiaroscuro, even more so in the last collection.
Probably the most successful, and which further demonstrates Pace’s imagination, is Boutique that centres on the female figure. An anonymous nude inhabits the realm of mannequins to become a commentary on beauty and femininity. Despite their crowded picture space, the compositions maintain balance. The human presence is barely noticeable at first, especially with the headless portrayal of most of these, which was probably exactly Pace’s intention, implying the fine line that exists between what is real and unreal.
This latter concern is a trait she shares with Vince Briffa that is present in his more recent installation pieces. No. 1 is such an example, being well composed with subtle chiaroscuro where grey tones break up the harshness between the figures and the background. ‘Her’ presence is easier to gauge when the composition is less clustered, such as in No 6, with the female’s self-assured stance.
The figures and objects in the black and white photographs are treated as forms. The subject may seem unimportant, merely a means to an end, but at the same time, this was clearly chosen to evoke the theme in question.
The other two collections are Soldier Boy and Maggie’s Kitchen, the first centering on the male anatomy and the other food still lifes. Alexandra Pace has in the former managed to bring out the grace and strength of the human male form. Some photographs, like the female nude images, are more overtly sensuous than others, but most are treated like studies, such as No. 15. Even though one can here see the male figure’s face, this does not distract from the anatomical focus, this in itself being a commentary on identity.
The only collection that does not feature the human figure is Maggie’s kitchen, a collection of studies of nature consisting of fruit and vegetable still lifes. More here than in the other black and white photographs, the subjects tend to disintegrate into the cavernously dark background, such as in the Onion where the foreground and background blend subtly together. But a stark contrast between the two is also present, such as in the Mushroom that is attractively bathed in an almost saintly light and can be distinctly made out.
Within these photographs a premeditated asymmetry plays an important role. What brings the exhibition and the location together are the minute details that denote a good eye for design that further substantiate the photographs.
Apart from the photographic collections, Pace must be commended for the use of this Valletta residence, for it is a rare eyeful. As one of my mentors rightly says, the best way to preserve architecture is to utilise it, sensibly of course. Upon the initiative of Kirsha Kaechele, a series of abandoned Creole cottages in New Orleans are being turned into gallery spaces. These would otherwise have been left to perish, just as is happening to some of the striking houses in our Renaissance-planned city with the seemingly latent approach being adopted to conservation in many cases.
On the ‘Redprints’ website is the diary of how this Valletta house was brought back to life in a few intensive weeks. A few select retro items found in the house were salvaged and are being showcased. These come as a reminder of the different phases in the building’s 400-year existence. Alexandra Pace is with this exhibition and endeavour adding a layer to the houses’ history.
Tags: art review, exhibition, redprints, sunday times
The Redprints opening night was a very successful event, very much exceeding expectations for the night. The opening event was enjoyed by an eclectic mix of people interested in fine art photography. The 4 collections exhibited, totalling 56 pieces in all, were created by Alexandra Pace specifically for this exhibition. This event will serve as a launching pad for redprints.com – the online gallery of limited edition fine art photography by Alexandra Pace.
Tags: exhibition, night, opening, photographs, redprints
A sneak preview of No.68; preparing for Redprints exhibition opening night. A total of 56 prints across 4 collections will be displayed in 4 different rooms around the gallery. No.68 is a 400 year old valletta townhouse set on 4 floors, which has been turned into an exhibition space for this exhibition.
Tags: alexandra pace, exhibition, No. 68, redprints, setting up
Alexandra Pace lives undemandingly in a world that presents itself in a multitude of facets, surrounded not by a single truth, reality or possibility but rather a profusion of alternatives, all plausible; all bearing promise of parallel conviviality. This is manifest in the way she approaches her latest project – where a house is primed to take on a series of photographic images as its new tenants and where these same images, with their distinctive and decisive aesthetic seek to conform to walls that have known a former history, a differently lived experience.
No. 68, St Lucy Street or Triq Santa Lucia as we commonly know it in Valletta is a place where time stood still; a place where past, present and a promise of future memories all live simultaneously. This house seems to have been pre-destined to become the bearer of time’s significant surfaces of the art of memory that is photography. It uncannily bears the same number as the ideal temperature for developing black-and-white film, that is 68 degrees Fahrenheit and is also situated in a street named after the primary imperative phenomenon for the creation of photographs – Light (Lucy or Lucia is derived from the word luce, the Italian word for light). No. 68 has waited quietly for Alexandra to uncover this destiny, to patiently stitch together the fabric of such rich human stories. The presence of Alexandra’s grandparents who thirty years ago used to occupy the house is exposed through the simple restoration of these walls, which in turn have become the bearers of the realities brought to light through Alexandra’s own photography.
The artist has chosen to present us with four distinct photographic collections, studies which at face value testify to the technical bravura of the artist, but on deeper levels also carry layers of social and artistic comment of local and global reference. Alexandra is concerned with society at large, with all that is human, which she discovers through both the phenomenon of light, and also the lack of it – through shadow.
On the ground floor, we are presented with the collection entitled ‘Santa Marija’ – a series of lomographic images taken under water. This collection seems to encapsulate the concept of fish-eye photography in a literal fashion, where the viewer is presented with a fish’s vantage point and observes the locals on their day of assault of the beaches – a day of revelry that is surely dreaded by the aquatic vertebrate inhabitants of the shallow waters. The artist predicts such a situation and instead of shying away or joining in with the masses, teams up with the silent underwater community to observe and record the spectacle. One wonders the motive of such an action by our protagonist – is it as Vilém Flusser describes the instinctive action of the photographer that resembles the paleolithic hunter who lies in wait and stalks the tundra in search of the right moment to attack or is it on the other hand a more playful exercise where through the camera one aspires to get to know what our humble shallow-water dwellers feel like on such a dreaded feast? Alexandra here is letting us witness the Santa Marija rituals from an unusual underwater perspective, where the spectacle of swirling bodies of varying shapes and sizes more than make up for the absence of traditional fireworks displays.
Further up on the second floor the tone changes to a more serious one with three photographic collections that deal with the way light appropriates form, both human and material. The ‘Boutique’ collection is a peek into a shop-window that celebrates the western concept of female beauty. An assortment of truncated mannequins and female human form devoid of colour blur the boundaries between plastic and skin and hone our focus to the exemplary profiles that not only dictate the fashion industry but also shape our concept of what the ultimately sculpted woman should aspire to. This collection presents a modern-day dichotomy – on the one hand it reinforces the well-known sense of visual pleasure one experiences when exposed to the codified aesthetic of the perfect form and on the other it presents an unattainable reality to many who are either not blessed with such forms of beauty or who despite the age factor continuously try to fight the currents in search of such a flawless ideal. Alexandra here puts the question upfront. She places both mannequins and humans on equal platform as if to question – “are the mannequins that have been fashioned by human hands competing with the same humans who have created them? Are we therefore hostage to the same ideals we have created?”
The same rationale seems to be applied to another collection entitled ‘Soldier Boy’. Alexandra dips into the sketchbooks of the great masters to re-interpret the male equivalent of the archetype of strength, agility and grace under studio light arranged with surgical precision. In the same idiom as the ‘Boutique’ collection, ‘Soldier Boy’ presents the perfect aesthetic, this time the masculine. What I find intriguing in both collections are their well-chosen titles. Both ‘Boutique’ and ‘Soldier Boy’ point at an accepted and aspired to western form which only recognizes a specific type of body, a Hellenic ideal, a species that is young, well exercised and conforms to certain well-defined proportions. It seems as if Alexandra, who is accustomed to working with such perfect bodies in her commercial practice, is at the same time also questioning the glorification by the media of such hand-picked, idealised forms, through contrasting them with the random cross-section of bodies captured in the ‘Santa Marija’ collection on the ground floor.
The final collection in this exhibition is by no means the least. ‘Maggie’s Kitchen’ is dedicated to Alexandra’s mother Margaret and is a minimalist poetic exercise in shape and form. The artist bestows common vegetables with an absolute sculptural stature that belies their original size through the application of a pitch-black background and dramatic lighting.
Reminiscent of Elizabeth Arden’s iconic emblem, the red door leading to No. 68 Redprints invites viewers to the very personal world of Alexandra Pace, both lived through her childhood and created through her photography. One hopes that such a living proof of visual and artistic sensitivity being offered by one of our leading photographers is shared and enjoyed to the full by individuals eager for such experiences.
© VB 19-10-08
Vince Briffa is an artist, curator and researcher; lectures at the Centre for Communication Technology at the University of Malta and is also visiting artist in Contemporary Art Practice at Leeds University.
vbriffa@gmail.com
Tags: alexandra pace, malta, No:68, photography, redprints, valletta