Curator CHRIS MEIGH-ANDREWS speaks with Lara Zammit about the collective art exhibition Meta-Landscapes: Representations and Perceptions and its underlying concepts.

LZ: Meta-Landscapes: Representations and Perceptions is centred on the theme of landscape, presenting works by artists who have pioneered the electronic moving image as an art form. How have these artists interacted with the theme of landscape in their works? How does the theme feature in their art?

CMA: The 12 artists in the exhibition have engaged in very diverse ways with the theme, which is of course intentionally very broad and deliberately open to this kind of diversity.

The genre of landscape has a very long tradition in both eastern and western culture – a tradition that extends back at least 1000 years. Moving image artists are exploring this long history in fresh and challenging ways, and they are opening up the territory to new possibilities while simultaneously linking up with earlier traditions.

For some artists, the landscape is synonymous with “nature” – with all that is somehow beyond, or separate and distinct from the man-made world that we increasingly are engaged with and surrounded by. The landscape can be a place to escape to… a retreat and a refuge.

Installation view of ‘Data Sea’ (2021) by Yeoul Son, 2 mins 20 secs video projection, COVID-19 dataset.

For other artists, working with the landscape theme is a way of seeking reconnection or even rapprochement, seeking to reunite us with the natural world. In whatever way the artists engage with the landscape, they bring it into the gallery to share and celebrate the interconnections and to invite us to participate in their vision.

LZ: The exhibition purports to question what the experience of landscapes might suggest or reveal beyond their immediate appearance. This suggests that the works can also delve into what marks landscapes may leave on an individual, whether as physical response or internal state. What sort of landscapes do the works contend with? How do landscapes affect an individual?

CMA: The works in the exhibition draw on many aspects of landscape for their visual and acoustic imagery , some of which have precedents in painting and the visual arts, and some of which add something new: the ocean (Attard and Son), the magical island of Gozo (Briffa and myself), forests and woodland (Hill and Cahen), the New Mexico desert (Vasulka), the mountain peaks and ocean floor (Hooykaas), the open countryside of Newfoundland (Snow), the beach in Lanzarote (Flaxton), the seashore (Campus), flowing rivers and streams (Korot).

Works invite the viewer to engage and interact with their own senses

All of these works present images (and sounds) of nature as a way of creating a sense of connecting and engaging with other important themes too – conflicting emotions, uncertainty, morality, creativity, serendipity, joy. All the works are of course time-based – they unfold and flow across time and they represent spatial experience and perceptions.

They are not simply representations or depictions of places or locations but invite the viewer to engage and interact with their own senses with embodied memories of personal experiences within the landscape.

Installation view of ‘Nothing Beside Remains’ (2022) by Chris Meigh-Andrews, 16 mins 4K 360 video, ed. 5 + 1AP.

LZ: How had you directed the unfolding of this exhibition with respect to your curatorial briefs to the artists and what have you gleaned from the artists’ interaction with landscapes?

CMA: I did not direct, per se. I actively selected the work, inviting artists whom I respect and admire to contribute to the exhibition by identifying the theme and the approach.

I am first and foremost an artist dedicated to working with the electronic moving image and my approach as a writer and a curator is related to my commitment to the medium.  I have learned a great deal about the way that artists working with the moving image, with its interrelated blend of sound, light, space and time, can evoke a sense of place and of intellectual, spiritual and physical engagement.

Meta-Landscapes: Representations and Perceptions, curated by Chris Meigh-Andrews, includes artworks by Norbert Francis Attard (MT), Vince Briffa (MT), Robert Cahen (FR), Peter Campus (USA), Terry Flaxton (UK), Gary Hill (USA), Madelon Hooykaas (NL), Beryl Korot (USA), Chris Meigh-Andrews (UK), Michael Snow (CA), Yeoul Son (KR) and Steina Vasulka (IS/USA). The exhibition at Valletta Contemporary is open until June 25.