Gozo exhibition highlights ‘transitions’ in artist’s career
Norbert Francis Attard explores his deep interest in places and their memories
A new temporary exhibition at Il-Ħaġar Museum in Victoria presents artworks by Norbert Francis Attard.
Living and working between Malta, Gozo, Berlin and now also Seoul, Attard continually shifts both his physical and creative life in pursuit of new or alternative ways of thinking and producing.
The exhibition highlights these crucial yet relatively unknown in-between stages, undertaken while Attard was transitioning from one period of artistic development to the next.
Each phase reveals his experimentation with found objects and materials, forms and themes − processes that ultimately led to the renewal of his practice. On display is a selection of works from each transitional phase spanning the years 1970 to 1999.
Attard was a self-taught painter and graphic artist before turning to installation art in 1998. In 1977, he graduated in architecture from the University of Malta and practised as an architect for 20 years until 1996. Between 1978 and 1979, he lived in Germany, working with Licht in Raum, directed by Johannes Dinnebier, one of Germany’s pioneers in light design.
Today, Attard’s contemporary art practice spans architecture, sculpture, photography, video and installation, through which he explores his deep interest in places and their memories.
Blurring the boundaries between disciplines, he integrates the physicality of sites with their layered histories, treating them as products of place, social interaction and generative processes.
Transitions, curated by Nikki Petroni, will be inaugurated tomorrow at 7.30pm. Everyone is invited. The exhibition runs until June 29.