A riot of saturated colour and foliage, Froġa / Farrago is a new exhibition of oil paintings by Sebastian Tanti Burlò at Sliema’s R Gallery that runs until December 3. Best known for his political cartoons in the Times of Malta, Burlò swaps his pen for the brush while retaining his unapologetic social commentary, a flair for the absurd, satirical strokes and an underlying subversive narrative.

Nature, journalism and the world’s issues are represented across the gallery’s four rooms with a light-hearted touch that belies the serious nature of the underlying issues highlighted.

“I don’t think being too serious gets you anywhere,” Burlò smiles. “By injecting lightness and wit, you can make people really stop and think.”

Siġġiewi Garden no. 1

The exhibition includes both ‘tragicomedy’, the romanticised memory of the island and what society has become, and a wider commentary on global issues, on the impending environmental catastrophe and the regression of democracy to the far right.

Yet, beneath these bleak preoccupations, Burlò sees beauty, in the gardens and countryside where he grew up and spends most of his free time, in the joy of friendships grown through childhood adventures up trees, and the long summer meals and prolonged winter walks relished with friends and family. It’s a beauty that bursts from these paintings.

“Nature and gardens have been central to my growth,” Burlò says. “My earliest memories are of my father, Maurice Tanti Burlò, whose first studio in Siġġiewi doubled as my bedroom. I remember falling asleep to the sound of his brush and pen running along paper, his figure silhouetted by his angle poise which illuminated his drafting table.

Probable Headlines No. 3

"He would paint the most beautiful butterflies and birds, flowers and trees, a juxtaposition to the ugly reality of Malta he portrayed in his political cartoons. Both my parents spent their lives, through their respective work, fighting for a better Malta.”

It’s clearly an ethos that Burlò has embraced.

“If my father wasn’t in his studio,” he continues, “he would be in the garden. He packed it with a cacophony of thick-leaved plants and flowers, typical to the Mediterranean. He would sit in the sun, sipping his coffee, sketching the lizards as they scurried past. Even if I didn’t realise it then, this upbringing would lead me to my most important friendships, that would ultimately shape me into the artist I am today. The paintings of the gardens of Siġġiewi, Dar Riħana, Villa Corsini and Lytchett Heath, correspond to those friendships and love, and to where we were given space to grow.”

Daphne’s Garden No. 3

While one painting shows his father’s garden, another shows Daphne Caruana Galizia’s – a garden to which Burlò was a regular visitor in his youth, a stark reminder of the uglier side of island life.

We should be shocked into action but we are immune or numb, so we simply continue eating out breakfast

In Burlò’s second series Rajt Malta Tiħxien (I Saw Malta Grow Fat), he focuses on 21st-century Malta, his still-lifes, landscapes and portraiture a satirical take on traditional paintings.

“A play on Herbert Ganado’s Rajt Malta Tinbidel (I Saw Malta Change), the series depicts Malta’s over-construction and overconsumption, its delicious produce and unsavoury characters,” Burlò explains.

Field Party

Alongside, Everything Remains the Same (The Beating of Yūḥannā), the largest painting in the exhibition, was painted in the gallery because it would not fit into Burlò’s studio. Based on a 49-per-cent-scaled reduction of Caravaggio The Beheading of St John, it started off as something of a joke.

“For centuries, the Maltese art world has been dominated by this one painting and its painter, Caravaggio,” he says.

“My intention was to use the reproduction tell the story of the third-country national who was reportedly beaten up by Transport Malta officials last November, and of George Floyd and to highlight #BlackLivesMatter. Previously dismissive of Caravaggio, I quickly realised how masterful this painting was, not only in technique, but in its recounting of an age-old story, that rhymed with the one I was attempting to tell – society’s indifferent voyeurism towards racism and violence.”

Da' Drinu

Probable Headlines no.1

denzel il-Washington

Krips

Also looking further afield, in the series Probable Headlines, Burlò draws on his love of journalism as he deals with serious global issues.

He tackles the rise of fake news and buried truths using headlines that have yet to happen, such as ‘US Ecology Collapses’ on the front page of The New York Times. These are not real but we expect them to happen, and so while the newspaper headlines within them are stark, the paintings simply show an everyday morning where revelations of floods or wildfires are surrounded by the mundane – a pastry and a coffee percolator, for example.

“We should be shocked into action,” says Burlò, “but we are immune or numb, so we simply continue eating out breakfast. I hope that this exhibition will encourage people to take more notice of the changing world around them.”

The artist thanks his wife Lydia Cecil, his longtime collaborator Ann Dingli and the team at R Gallery for their support. Froġa / Farrago runs until December 3.