Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1130632
THIS WEEK ART maltatoday | SUNDAY • 16 JUNE 2019 4 How did the idea for 'Jumpstart' initially take shape, and what were some of your early discussions/brainstorming sessions leading up to it mainly about? The idea was nourished by vigorous discussions with prac- ticing artists, curators, students and researchers about the need for a visual timeline for contem- porary art in Malta. 'Jumpstart' sketches out a tentative visual trajectory of Maltese art from modernist to contemporary practice, with a nod to the dis- rupters who helped 'jumpstart' the local ecology forward. Chronology is only one of the ways in which this story can be told. 'Jumpstart' employs a comparative visual methodolo- gy that juxtaposes world events, national events, iconic world art and Malta-based art events across the decades. Although there were numer- ous art events within this pe- riod, very little is published, documented and deposited in archives as hard copies or in digital format for the more re- cent events. Timelines tend to conjure up a neat linear suc- cession of events, but this is not quite how things happen – more so in an insular Maltese context which presents asyn- chronous development, dissoci- ative artistic practice and other idiosyncrasies. Certainly, we acknowledge that there is core research, but as yet there is no rigorous cataloguing of the vari- ous events that stand out, lead- ing up to the very recent past. 'Jumpstart' is fuelled by the realisation that people are for- getting important events that shaped local art practice and art history. Students and younger artists may not be so aware of what transpired in the recent past. Not having such docu- mentation readily available in libraries, museum archives or online, hampers awareness. It should benefit emergent artists practising in Malta, students and wider audiences, to become more aware of recent contem- porary art history and how it fits in the broader local and interna- tional context. Research, knowl- edge and informed art practice should insure against derivation and replication. This, in turn, helps raise the bar, paving the way for more critical engage- ment and analysis. Which criteria did you employ when it came to selecting the featured artists, and how was their intrinsic value and relevance to the timeline determined? The criteria were based on ar- chival research and field work. Featured events and artists were selected according to their rel- evance to the development of modern and contemporary art and subject to the pragmatic availability of material. Archival deposits of events within public entity archives are sparse and highly fragmented. So, artists, families, collectors and citizen archivists had to be approached to fill in the blanks. We emphasise that this is an incomplete timeline and that more research will hopefully add more data. This would help Co-curated by Georgina Portelli and Katya Micallef, 'Jumpstart: An Incomplete Timeline', will project a dynamic trajectory of modern and contemporary Maltese art onto the facade of St James Cavalier from June 21. Portelli speaks to TEODOR RELJIC about the challenges of compiling what is, in fact, an urgent record to aid present-day art practice, all done within the umbrella of the currently in-development Malta International Contemporary Art Space (MICAS) Beyond simple chronology Teodor Reljic "Timelines tend to conjure up a neat linear succession of events, but this is not quite how things happen" "In previous decades individual artists emerge as isolated innovators, whereas artists from the late 1990s and early 2000s become assertively pro- active as a cluster, with the barriers facing visual artists becoming their source of inspiration"