Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1287818
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 13 SEPTEMBER 2020 5 THIS WEEK ART Steven Scicluna organised the N15 Street Art & Culture Festival in the Seven Sisters neighbourhood in London, where he lived at the time whole benefit more from the wealth of talent that is available on the island at the moment. How does it feel to form part of the up- coming Spread the Ink exhibition? Are you glad for your work to be exhibited on home turf, so to speak, and do you feel a particular affinity to the process whereby Alexandra Aquilina recreates your work using screenprinting meth- ods? I couldn't be more glad! I've known Alex for quite a few years now and al- so know a few of the other artists who will be contributing to the exhibition quite well, so it's great to finally get the chance to work together and get some work shown locally. It was also nice to revisit the technique of screenprinting, which I hadn't used in quite a few years. Screenprinting is a printing method that requires precise craftsmanship and a good knowledge of colours, tints and paper types, amongst other things. This exhibition is exciting because of the sty- listic range that will be on show, yet this diversity also means that the printing of each artwork would have needed to be well-planned and researched by Alex beforehand. Being a manual printing method, it is normal for a set of screenprints to have slight defects in registration (the precise layering of different layers of color) and color output, but from the few photos I've seen of the printed version of my submission so far, the results look ab- solutely fantastic. Can't wait to see how Alex managed to deal with some of the other submissions. What's next for you? Plenty of things. Myself and Sara [wife and designer] are currently co-directing and putting the final touches on a new online Masters in Branding course for a university here in Valencia, which is keeping us fairly busy at the moment. Back in Malta with the MCOI, I am also involved in developing a couple of pro- jects over the coming months (includ- ing Malta's first ever illustration annu- al), all of which should help increase the opportunities available to local illustra- tors. Finally, I'm also working on a re- search project together with a team of Maltese designers and curators which aims to shed some much-needed light on the history of Maltese graphic arts, its origins and issues surrounding the theme of national visual identity. It's a project that's been in the pipeline for quite some time, so it's great to finally have the time to work on it. Spread the Ink will be on display at Desko, St Lucy Street, Valletta from September 17 to 24. Opening hours: 11:00-14:00, 16:00-19:00 (Monday to Friday) and 11:00-15:00 (Saturday). Due to the pandemic, only groups of four people will be allowed at the gallery at a given time. Visitors are asked to practice social distancing and wear masks while inside. The participating artists include: Alex- andra Aquilina, Magda Azab, Nigel Bal- dacchino, Matthew Cardona, Valentina Fyorh Attard, Chris 'Sea Puppy' Jensen, Eric Leone, Illenia 'Illy' Madaro, Mari- etta Mifsud, Pierre Portelli, Zvezdan Reljic, Steven Scicluna, and Moria Zah- ra. The project is supported by Arts Council Malta ISpread the Ink will be on display at Desko, St Lucy Street, Valletta from Sep- tember 17 to 24. Opening hours: 11:00- 14:00, 16:00-19:00 (Monday to Friday) and 11:00-15:00 (Saturday). Due to the pandemic, only groups of four people will be allowed at the gallery at a giv- en time. Visitors are asked to practice social distancing and wear masks while inside. The participating artists include: Alexandra Aquilina, Magda Azab, Ni- gel Baldacchino, Matthew Cardona, Valentina Fyorh Attard, Chris 'Sea Pup- py' Jensen, Eric Leone, Illenia 'Illy' Ma- daro, Marietta Mifsud, Pierre Portelli, Zvezdan Reljic, Steven Scicluna, and Moria Zahra. The project is supported by Arts Council Malta ABOUT THE CONCEPT Spread the Ink curator and screenprinter Alexandra Aquilina talks us through the process "Out of desire to learn more skills in dif ferent ar tistic st yles than my own, I began approaching friends asking them if I could print their work. The idea quickly snowballed and I applied for funding to create a full scale exhibition featuring many more ar tists than I originally planned. I issued an open call and selected 13 ar tists (including myself) some emerging and some established, from Malta or based in Malta and from various ar tistic backgrounds. "Most of the pieces were not made with the intention of being screen printed so the ar t works had to be adapted for the medium. All the creatives involved gave me the freedom to experiment and do what I felt was right to recreate their works and the outcome is stunning and tactile. It is amazing the tricks the eye plays when seeing a piece from far or up close, how tones, textures and gradients are created through printing. The prints will also be exhibited without glass to fur ther allow appreciation of the tactile element of hand printing. All the prints come in a limited edition of 10 pieces and will all have the same price tag. I am very pleased with how all the pieces turned out and learnt so much from it! My next step is to print even BIGGER!" A piece from Contracompositions, a solo exhibition of paintings by Steven Scicluna which ran as part of Valencia Design Week 2017 "It would be great to see the country as a whole benefit more from the wealth of talent that is available on the island at the moment"