“Now I know what a ghost is. Unfinished business, that’s what.” – Salman Rushdie.

Author Salman Rushdie’s quote from his famous controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, describes succinctly the purpose of these ephemeral apparitions that allegedly cling to their previous lives, reluctant to let go and move on to celestial pastures new or whatever.

In the 2001 film The Others, set in 1945 and directed by Alejandro Amenábar, the three main protagonists, a family that is made up of a rather psychotic mother and two children, live in a large house all alone and shrouded in a penumbral darkness, curtains drawn all the time, always living in fear of paranormal manifestations. The husband and father of the boy and girl hadn’t returned from the war and feared among the millions of wartime dead.

Spoiler alert, the twist towards the end of the film reverses the roles and the haunted realise that they themselves are the ghosts in the equation. They cling on to the echoes of their previous lives and fail to move on, as some unfinished business prevents them from doing so.

Empty houses

In his current exhibition at Mqabba’s Il-Kamra ta’ Fuq, titled Ghost Stories, Alfie Gatt depicts moments in the ‘life’ of a girl, whom he refers to as the White Lady. She lovingly haunts a palatial Maltese house, patterned tiles, traditional tal-lira clock and all, thus affirming the ‘Malteseness’ of the narrative. The museal opulence seems to increase the still silence of the environment. According to the artist, the ghost is a metaphor for a person experiencing procrastination; one is free to interpret this on different levels as the White Lady might as well be a disoriented spirit, similar to those in Amenábar’s film. The attention to detail reminds one of the interiors of Madeleine Gera; however, there is also a reference to the intricacy of Brian Grima’s oeuvre.

Maze

The girl roams around, shorn of her shoes and wearing a white dress of maybe Maltese lace, accentuating her transience. The painting Memento shows a disconcerting Domenico Gnoli obsession with fabric detail, the focus being on the flying bird brooch and the well-manicured hands that are full of symbolic relevance; relics from a life that she can’t let go of.

Most of the time, the identity of the girl is shrouded in mystery as Gatt refrains from a full facial revelation by cropping the perspective or by making her face look away, as if in adolescent coyness, from the viewers. There are a couple of exceptions, one of which is Loop, where we catch a glimpse of her face while she is descending down the stairway. There are some of us who had lived in two-storey houses in our childhood, who in those days wouldn’t go upstairs unless accompanied by parents or older siblings. These rooms, usually bedrooms, weren’t where daily life happened. The downstairs was full of life and light, indeed the heart of the home, and we felt safe in those environments. For our receptive young minds, the upstairs darkness was haunted by ghosts and ghouls.

Intruders

In this painting, Gatt seems to suggest that some ghosts, such as this girl’s, still relish the downstairs streaming with sunlight and life, just as the two children did in Amenábar’s film. The girl is caught in a loop of dualities, persevering in her current situation or letting go, life and death, light and darkness, upstairs and downstairs. A loop that risks running forever unless she decides to move on.

A painting should contain a mystery, but not for mystery’s sake: a mystery that is essential to reality- Fairfield Porter

Intruders brings the outside in, through the doves that have gained entry and disturbed the sobriety of the house. Doves represent innocence, peace with God and purity. According to the exhibition’s mission statement, “the unexpected intruding birds are reminiscent of a personal event experienced by the artist, which affected him a lot”. Thus, Gatt introduces a personal narrative into the fabric of the storytelling.

Waltz

The girl serenely observes the intrusion, relishing the freshness of the birds in flight. This ghost harbours no dark intentions; the viewer empathises with the White Lady’s timid nature and with her unwillingness to exorcise the memory of her happy days among the living. The house will always be her home, notwithstanding everything. Falling Angel, single feather and all, reads more like a clutching at a past and procrastinating on what’s next, rather than a fall from grace. The feather is virginally white, this is no proud fallen angel of vice.

There is a Fairfield Porter spirit in Waltz. The American artist once remarked: “The profoundest order is revealed in what is most casual.” One comes across this in his famous paintings of American interiors in which he found balance in the casual placement of mundane objects such as furniture, furnishings and escutcheons of domesticity. He sometimes included a member of the household, capturing a mood of idealised domestic tranquillity. Waltz is also reminiscent of the work of Kenneth Zammit Tabona, who is synonymous with depictions of rich interiors, his cat, Feliċ, as the lord of the manor.

Memento

In Gatt’s painting, a cat surveys the carefree ghost as she pirouettes. Felines are known for their heightened sixth sense and power of observation. They can detect things that lie beyond mere human capabilities. The cat casually looks on, maybe the White Lady was its previous owner and maybe even still its current one as the cat can still perceive her as such.

Porter also affirmed: “A painting should contain a mystery, but not for mystery’s sake: a mystery that is essential to reality.” One feels a measure of this in this elegiac painting by the Maltese artist.

Wandering

Wandering could refer to the White Lady’s hesitation, whether to hold on or to release herself from her earthly ‘prison’. The house, with all its beauty and its coven of memories, holds her captive. The past can be a stranglehold, even for ghosts. The patterned tiles, the furniture, the warmness of the house momentarily lose their hold on her and become obscure, out of focus as she meanders bet­ween states into a netherworld, and debates with herself whether to be relieved of what the artist defines as her ‘personal purgatory’, or not.

She wanders aimlessly, rather scared to take the next step, one of the feet held in trepidation. By cropping the perspective of the composition, Gatt increases the drama of the situation. Our thought process wanders off as well as we try to figure out the dynamics of the storytelling.

Falling angel

Ghost Stories sees Gatt straying away from his usual style of work, in which narratives were juxtaposed to get at the whole picture from various perspectives all at once. Gatt stresses that this time, he treated each work as a snapshot of a movie scene. It’s up to us to act as directors, or rather, editors, to juxtapose the various stories into a cohesive anthology.

Ghost Stories, curated by Melanie Erixon for Art Sweven and hosted by Mqabba’s Il-Kamra ta’ Fuq, is on until March 12. Log on to the exhibition’s Facebook page for more details.