EXHIBITIONS The Mill launches their Spring Programme

News / Interview / The Gabriel Caruana Foundation

December 2022 - February 2023

MALTA

The Spring Programme at The Mill

The Mill – Art, Culture and Crafts Centre is a staple within the Maltese visual arts community. Located in the bustling streets of Birkirkara, the repurposed 1724 windmill was reintroduced in 1990 as an independent artist-run contemporary cultural centre for modern and contemporary art, culture and crafts by the late Gabriel Caruana, together with Mary Rose Caruana

Run by The Gabriel Caruana Foundation, The Mill has steadily held its ground as a highly sought-after exhibition space. Artpaper caught up with Foundations’ Co-Creative Director and Programme Manager Raffaella Zammit and Co-Creative Director and Curator Elyse Tonna to learn more about the Spring Programme, an initiative that gives emerging artists the exciting opportunity of exhibiting their work at The Mill as well as grow and develop as artists.

The Spring Programme found its roots rather organically. Building on the values of the late Gabriel Caruana and the Foundation itself. “Every year we’d hold an exhibition for an emerging artist,” explains Zammit. “During the COVID lockdown we decided to dedicate a wall at the Mill for emerging artists and thus the first SPRING call was released in 2020.” The idea for the programme came about following a series of workshops conducted with voluntary organisations, Public Cultural Organisations, artists and various stakeholders related to the sector.

“It turns out that this was quite the enlightening process. The need for a platform for emerging artists was one of the main issues raised” emphasises Tonna. Most calls are typically for vast exhibitions and therefore, not suitable for an artist who is in the beginning of their career. Furthermore, a space for collaboration between artists was needed, a common need faced in the sector at large. Thus, the Spring programme was created to address these issues.

The response to the first call attracted over 35 applications. Most applications were of a high standard and therefore, the exhibition to take place on a singular wall of The Mill grew to take over the whole ground floor. Following the success of the first iteration a second call was released in 2020 which was just as successful and resulted in seven group exhibitions and one solo exhibition.

Over time certain gaps were starting to emerge within the emerging artists’ process. Thus, the Foundation introduced a programme titled toolbox+, an offshoot of the SPRING Programme. toolbox+ introduced a series of workshops that would arm artists with practical skills needed to successfully execute an exhibition including writing rationales, wording biographies, managing a project, understanding budgets and more. Following a period of reflection in 2022, the Gabriel Caruana Foundation had renewed the Spring Programme. Following an evaluation by a board of artists and art educators, a dynamic and eclectic cohort of emerging artists have been selected showing promise, quality, experimentation and potential. The selected Spring artists: Isaac Warrignton, Sarah Chircop, Giola Cassar and Aprille Zammit, Mono2Mass, Claire Farrugia, Rachelle Deguara, Sephora Schembri, Sheldon Saliba, Samuel Ciantar and Florinda Camilleri, will feature in four major exhibitions at The Mill between 2023 and 2024.

In February 2023, The Mill will be opening its doors for the first Spring event, a solo exhibition featuring Florinda Camilleri. The exhibition will explore the points of encounter between human and more-than-human bodies as sites of creative potential. Here, relational curiosity is materialised through transdisciplinary co-creative processes within collaborative work involving digital media, polaroid photography, clay sculptures, and live performance. The remaining three group exhibitions will be held in June and October 2023 followed by the final exhibition in February of 2024.

Photo by Elisa Von Brockdorff

The Spring Artistic Programme for Emerging Artist 2023 - 2024 is partly supported by Arts Council Malta. For more information visit www.gabrielcaruanafoundation.org

Past SPRING edition works by Kim Sammut. Photo by Elisa Von Brockdorff Mary Rose and Gabriel Caruana June 1990. Photo by GCF Archives