An old photo of a man emerging from a trullo, enlarged across one of the cavern-like walls at Spazju Kreattiv, caught my eye at the opening for the exhibition by the Alfred Chircop Trust.

I thought I had recognised the architecture in one of the artworks that I had walked past, so I was eager to see that my hunch was correct. A trullo is an expression of Puglian vernacular and it was fascinating for me to hear of the artist’s intrigue with it. The trullo shows an affordance towards its context. It becomes of the place, and significant for the place.

Untitled, 2011

As you walk through the exhibition ...the struggle seems to be eternal, you understand the artist is reconciling with our own vernacular. There is the Maltese landscape in both its most vivid, and most abstracted, displayed across the cavalier’s walls.

The exhibition presents drawings, paintings, artefacts from the artist’s studio, fragments of things the artist read and said, paintings from his contemporaries; and new, contemporary additions. Chircop takes us on a journey of what he saw Malta being and becoming, perhaps unknowingly warning us of what was to come.

An etching by Alfred Chircop, 1972.

In these works, there is a violence with which he marks paper and canvas which is missing in the exhibited nudes which he draws so elegantly. A single line traces the perimeter of models in obscure and unlikely positions. Even here, you can sense the vernacular; bodies not romanticised but imperfectly perched to replicate nature’s perfection.

As an architecture student, I knew that Chircop had taught so many of the people who taught me; so there’s an affinity I have for his work because I believe fine-art tuition is a cornerstone for architectural training. I never experienced his lectures first-hand, but the exhibition seems to propose him as an important voice within philosophical and political discourses at the time; something we need our art to be more than ever.

As I walk through the contextualised section of his work, it is clear that Chircop is working at one of Malta’s most exciting times. As the artists straddle with change and new ideas, their work becomes a mouthpiece for the way they hope to see the island. It has its own particular tone and language, emerging from both a time and place and serving a people and function – a vernacular.

Untitled, 1968-69

Abstraction proposes a moment of synthesis. When it manages to express the inexpressible, it creates a moment of spirituality. There is, in the way the abstracts of this exhibition are hung, a sense of calamity. We float within the spaces Chircop creates, contemplating.

The work generates an aura and dwarfs us into mere spectators. The universe is unfolding above and around us and we are humbled, made aware of our actual size. In its own way this becomes the artist’s vernacular expression – the flux he is at the heart of, seen through his eyes.

You can almost make out the colour of a Maltese festa, the contours of a Maltese landscape, the heads of people walking fast, seen from above a packed Maltese street. A vernacular is usually that which emerges by a people from within their homeland.

Self-portrait

In his abstracts, we see his mind as the territory from which his own domestic style emerges. Their function is to help navigate his zeitgeist and, at least for me, witnessing this becomes spiritual.

Chircop emerges from the trullo and we walk into his studio. The curators of this exhibition have sought to give us an authentic experience of his whole being. Charlene Vella, Mark Sagona and Christian Attard deliver complexity as a series of fragments, and showcase struggle as a hopeful opportunity, homeland as a fertile place for future-building.

General shot of the exhibition at Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta.

Untitled, 2013

Walking from the works on Mtaħleb, to the abstracts, the gallery at Spazju Kreattiv unknowingly juxtaposes his works with the now. Again, a conversation on vernacular: the limestone vault from centuries ago meets the steel trussing that has increased since the building’s rethinking at the millennium.

The exhibition packs the space with an artistic practice in transit, and just like all cultures, times, architectures, and politics, we see it change. There is in this change a strong commitment to see, and re-see what things are and can be. Of what is truly of the place and needs to be done for the place.

...the struggle seems to be eternal: Alfred Chircop: Paintings, Drawings, Prints is open until November 3 at Space A, Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta. The exhibition is organised by The Alfred Chircop Trust as part of the Spazju Kreattiv 2024-2025 programme and in collaboration with the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Malta. It is possible thanks to the DB Foundation, Farsons Foundation, Mapfre MSV Life, Heritage Malta, Visit Malta, Prevarti art conservation and restoration, and Spazju Kreattiv. The exhibition catalogue will be launched on October 24 at 7pm at Space A, Spazju Kreattiv, and accompanied by a curator’s tour.