On Wednesday, July 26, an exhibition titled Context was launched at Bureau Iniala in Valletta. The line-up of four artists, among the foremost in the local art scene, was certainly of major interest to the local art aficionados who turned up in numbers for the exhibition’s inauguration.

Ryan Falzon, Madeleine Gera, Anna Grima and Paul Scerri, through their independent creative searches, reflect on different issues and contexts, which range from the social to the political, from the introspectively personal to the purely aesthetic.

From left, Ryan Falzon, Anna Grima, Paul Scerri, Joseph Agius, Daniela Said and Maria Galea

Joseph Agius, the curator of the exhibition, delivered an inaugural speech in which he claimed that although Context as a choice of title might at first glance appear to be rather simplistic, generic and cliched, it is a reflection on 21^st-century disorientation.

He said that everyone seems to be clutching at straws, trying to find new contexts amid a backdrop of ideological, religious and political vacuums.

Referring to the work of the four participating artists and its capacity to analyse, people need to shake themselves from their slumber and apathy, and recalibrate their internal magnets to follow some semblance of direction, wherever it can be found.

Paul Scerri's ceramics for 'Context'

Admiring Madeleine Gera's 'The Plague Doctor'

Ryan Falzon's The 'Pelican brings its dead young back to life with its own blood'.

Context is a collaboration between Times Events, Bureau Iniala and Maria Galea of Marie Gallery5. It is supported by the Malta Tourism Authority and James Catering Services. It is open until September 5.