When Italian artist Giuseppe Penone, whose work examines the delicate balance between man and nature, was asked, “What has your country represented to you over the years?” he replied, “A place to find the memory of affection.”

Italy, and particularly his beloved Val Tanaro in the Piemonte region, serve as a reminder of the feelings and emotions that shaped his artistic perspective. In Alain Elkann’s insightful book 474 risposte, Penone makes a very important statement that, and I will quote directly from the Italian text, “Il mio piccolo paese è diventato il ricordo dei luoghi dove ho avuto le intuizioni su cui ho costruito molti dei miei lavori.”

I will loosely translate: “His small village, (and here he is referring to the place where he grew, Garessio, in the province of Cuneo, a woodland and primarily a farmer’s village, back in his youth) has become the memory of the places where he had the insights, or better the intuitions which have led him to create many of his works.”

In reality, what Penone is saying is that the memories of the village where he was brought up provided the inspiration for his work, and the materials used are therefore fragments of extracted from the memory of location.

I see numerous similarities between Penone’s and Victor Agius’ approaches to their work. Agius’ art is also deeply influenced by his ancestral roots, with his prime material, clay, being the offspring of his revered Gaia, who, like in many ancient societies, has played an important role in giving us life, nutrition, and spiritual inspiration.

The works invite us to participate in dialogues that cross traditional artistic boundaries.

Similar to Penone’s vocabulary of natural elements such as tree wood, forest density, and natural time, which formed the language that became central to his work, Agius’ vision is largely shaped by his close affinity to the local, perhaps even Gozitan terra firma, or to be more accurate, his vision of the ‘terra madre’.

Agius constantly references and reshapes his work to dig deeper into this primordial symbolism in order to find new ways to carry his ‘mother/matter’ analogy and transpose it to resonate within a contemporary sensibility.

The exhibition Inearth, Unearth: Archives of Matter and Ritual follows a process of material transformation that mirrors the hybrid amalgamation of a number of seemingly incongruent elements.

Among these, one can name the extraction of a variety of entries from an eclectic archive; and the displayed findings from an archaeological excavation process, where carefully studied fragments excavated from past histories are reconstructed to reveal narratives of ancient civilisations within a new dialogue with artefacts uprooted from the ceramicist’s and painter’s studio process.

Agius's practice is located at the intersection of art and archaeology.

The curated arrangements we see in these four hallways encourage us to embrace this compression of time and intertwining of cultures, and challenges us to shift our forma mentis from passive historical observers to active collaborators in Agius’ vision.

This exhibition therefore is multifaceted, a project in which the artist in collaboration with the curator, invites us to participate in dialogues that cross traditional artistic boundaries to rethink the archival turn through a multi-layered engagement with the related fields of fine art, archaeology, performance, and cultural heritage interpretation.

Layers of history, memory, and culture are generated by the artist’s transformational interventions on his materials in order to face these varied narratives, giving them a sense of timelessness and continuity to further challenge the increasingly hybrid and disconnected nature of our historical memory.

The exhibition follows a process of material transformation that mirrors the hybrid amalgamation of a number of seemingly incongruent elements

Contrary to site-specific installations that incorporate natural materials like earth, water, and plants, to evoke a sense of communion with mother earth, this show relies on the displacement of such gestures in place.

The current presentation diverges from mainstream site-specific artworks that emphasise the fleeting and cyclical essence of life, echoing nature’s cycles of birth, growth, decay, and regeneration. Such works not only highlight the beauty of Earth, but also serve as reminders of our responsibility to maintain and preserve it.

Layers of history, memory, and culture are generated by the artist’s transformational interventions.

Agius uses a different perspective to anchor his narrative, one that is more cerebral and which shifts us from nature’s context and separates us from our natural environment.

Although his raw material is extracted from the earth, his synthesis of materiality and ritual of creating is largely situated within the confines of his studio and speaks with the language of current museology, which is sympathetic to an organic and hybrid aesthetic and whose timeline can be experienced non-linearly.

With his practice located at the intersection of art and archaeology, Agius renews his materials’ narrative through a juxtaposition of lyrical as well as quasi abject offspring that are both born of the same terra madre.

The artist reimagines these materials as artefacts of contemporary culture, preserving and honouring marginalised histories and communities whose story is carried through the humble pottery artefacts while also reflecting on the devastation of the modern building sprawl through the use of the cement brick as a contemporary prop that pays cynical lip service to the humbleness of the work being presented.

The exhibition blurs the boundaries between art, archaeology, and social activism.

Ultimately, this project pushes to blur the boundaries between art, archaeology, and social activism, and contributes to a broader dialogue about the interconnectedness of past and present, of materiality and meaning.

Through transcending temporal and spatial boundaries, it invites us to reconsider our notions of cultural heritage and urban development, in the hope that a better equilibrium is discovered, one that further deepens our understanding of history, memory, and cultural heritage and nourishes our respect for the humble origins of life as lived on a tiny island rock we call home.

For the closing of Inearth, Unearth: Archives of Matter and Ritual artist Victor Agius will be performing alongside long-term collaborator composer Mariella Cassar-Cordina. The site-specific performance will feature the fusion of contemporary art and music within the four galleries of Space C today at 11am, the final day of the exhibition, which is curated by Elyse Tonna. The exhibition is supported by Arts Council Malta and APS Bank.