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28 THIS WEEK THIS WEEK CULTURE | TV | FILM CINEMA LISTINGS FOOD | WHAT'S ON The Young Turks of Malta's fine MaltaToday has been featuring profiles of the students from the MCAST Art and Design Higher National Diploma and Bachelor's programmes. In this, the sixth week, we interview Alberto Zagami and Leanne Lewis The influence of MCAST AZ: The time I've spent at MCAST has served to broaden my views and at the same time, also taught me to think outside the box. This has also helped me to open up my work onto the world, and to take into consideration what others may think of it. LL: My five years at MCAST gave me the opportunity to gain knowledge on a vast range of media and to work on various tasks and projects through which I experimented, developed, created and produced ideas. Working in Leanne Lewis All work this page by Leanne Lewis studios and workshops with other students and lecturers from different backgrounds and with different experiences also helped me to develop and expand my skills, knowledge and inspiration. All of this has helped me to focus on developing my style. Your art's main defining factor AZ: A key characteristic of my work is the themes I'm preoccupied with. These vary from death to fear. In many cases, the media used further help to communicate the message intended to the viewer. LL: At this point in time, I would say that the main defining factor of my work is the environment. My aim is to study and gain an understanding of how art could possibly enhance the public's awareness of the environment we are living in. I create work that represents everyday circumstances and environmental issues that the public is confronted with in order to draw attention to the devastating transformation that is taking place in our environment. Apart from raising environmental awareness and helping the viewer to learn more about such matters, by installing art pieces, artists will bring about the opportunity to make the local spaces look more creative, artistic, lively and inspiring. The more the people become aware, the better and healthier the environment we live in. The next step in your artistic development AZ: The next step would surely be to further build on the work created until now, and to push my work to the limit. LL: The next step is to experiment with different materials, in order to explore other new techniques that can be applied in future projects. I would also like to continue analysing local environmental issues to develop more works. I'm also planning to continue studying, and in the meantime I hope that more artists will start focusing on environmental issues and contributing in setting up such artworks, so that together we create more awareness.