Unfinished Business

SINCE THE SPARK OF AN IDEA JUST FIVE YEARS AGO, UNFINISHED ART SPACE HAS MATURED INTO A RESPECTED CONTRIBUTOR TO MALTA’S VISUAL ARTS SCENE. AS UNFINISHED CELEBRATES ITS FIFTH BIRTHDAY, FOUNDER MARGERITA PULÈ WRITES ABOUT HOW THE ORGANISATION STARTED, WHAT IT HAS ACHIEVED TILL NOW, AND ITS PLANS FOR THE NEXT FIVE YEARS.

Unfinished Art Space is one of the few independent noncommercial art spaces in Malta. Alongside more established small organisations such as The Mill in Birkirkara, or Studio Solipsis in Rabat, we operate on a tight budget, sometimes working from project to project, but always supporting and exhibiting artists and their work. Independent art spaces have had a potted history in Malta from the now legendary MCA in Marsa, to the ingenious itinerant programme of Fragmenta Malta, but not all have stood the test of timefor various contextual and practical reasons. Unfinished Art Space was borne out of this environment, out of a need for a flexible and open space, one that champions contemporary, experimental and research-based practices, while also providing a supportive context within which to work.

One important characteristic of Unfinished is that we, and our programme are nomadic and fluid. We have produced work with and within national institutions, but we also work in far less conventional spaces, such as a disused building, in public space, or in an online environment. Our first collaboration is still one of my favourites; with Parking Street Events, we recreated Il-Kamra ta’ Barra in Sliema beside a huge construction site that had been a blight on the neighbourhood for years. Recreating the atmosphere of respectability and elegance in the street, literally bringing the kamra (room) barra (outside), complete with old clock, chintzy furniture and landscapes, we invited passers-by and neighbours to drink a cup of tea with us on our sofa, and tell us about their concerns for the neighbourhood. Thus, Unfinished Art Space was born, often proposing a critical or political position, with commentary on feminist and postcolonial questions, working with artists to research and question these areas.

Our early initiatives were mostly impromptu affairs, produced with friends and well-wishers. In 2020, in a small break in the clouds of covidlockdown, we put on probably our most quickly-produced exhibition to date. Multi-disciplinary artist Charlene Galea had amassed hundreds of photographs of clubbing scenes, from her travels around Europe, from London and Ibiza, to Morocco and Romania. At a time when clubs all over Europe were closed, images of the exhilaration, intimacy and beauty of these dance scenes, along with music by Tina Camilleri brought a club-like queue to the door of the empty house we had commandeered for the project.

But in a short space of time, our projects gradually became more ambitious. Our two feminist shows, which coincided in 2020 and 2022 with International Women’s Day (both funded through Arts Council Malta schemes) allowed us to collaborate more widely and invite international artists to work with us. Memorable events include Romeo Roxmann Gatt and dancers performing My Womxn is a God My God is a Womxn in MUZA’s community space (part of Strangers in a Strange Land), Syowia Kyambi travelling from Kenya to install and perform her hard-hitting Kaspale’s Playground, and, in the wind and rain of an early January morning, Edith Dekyndt on a cherry-picker in Valletta’s Independence Square, filming the statue of Queen Victoria for her short film Nursery Crime (part of The Ordinary Lives of Women, co-curated with Elise Billiard Pisani).

We have also worked on some longerterm collaborative research projects that have served to build small communities – of artists, performers, and thinkers. Debatable Land(s) proposed a body of research working towards negotiation and decision-making, taking Malta as a case study for ideas around belonging, borderlines and territorial actions (a collaboration with Fleeting Territories and Greta Muscat Azzopardi). We showed this research in Vienna, as an experimental research-project, and later hosted a three-day festival in Kalkara continuing our research exploring how territories and lands are formed, and what conflicting interests influence these formations. Over the course of a weekend, the house was filled with sound-pieces, video-work, installations, performances and conversations, bringing our community – that had begun online – together.

The coming few years are all about international collaborations. In early 2024, we will be working in Barcelona with curators Alexia Medici and Pilar Cruz and a number of Maltese and Catalan artists on a site-specific exhibition Mater

And as time has gone by, we have also become more ambitious in sourcing funding, and are now partners in two Creative Europe projects - something which we were told was practically impossible for such a small organisation. We are already working on Figure It Out; the Art of Living Through System Failure with a number of European collaborators and led by the Croatian collective Drugo More, which will see a number of events during 2024 in Malta and around Europe.

The second of our Creative Europe projects, the Magic Carpets platform (led by Kaunas Biennale, and in Malta in collaboration with Istanbul-based Diyalog), has allowed us to invite curator Elyse Tonna to work with Maltese and Europe-based artists on a series of sitespecific multi-disciplinary interventions creating dialogue in relation to ecological thinking, speculative futures, and non-human communities.

Lastly, and another favourite of mine; in 2031, a Maltese city or region will again hold the title of European Capital of Culture – with an every-growing team of collaborators and participants, we are spearheading Farfara 2031 and preparing Farfara’s bid for the ECoC title.

Longer-term, we will continue to collaborate and research. We will also continue to support artists, colleagues and the creative sector in general, working towards an environment where more importance is given to contemporary art and artists. The name Unfinished Art Space refers to the process of the creative act; always evolving and never quite finished –we hope that we will keep evolving, developing, experimenting and being ‘unfinished’ for many more years to come.

Exhibtion /France / D’Alba-La-Romaine

ARTISTS OF Alba-La-Romaine

1950 - 1955

It was in 1948 that the artists of the School of Paris discovered in the newspaper Combat a call from the painter and theoretician André Lhote calling for artists and intellectuals to come and settle in the ruined houses of Alba-la-Romaine in the South of France: “What is an artist, the intellectual with one or two dozen surplus banknotes in the bottom of a drawer, who will recoil before the intoxicating work to be accomplished: saving a beautiful old house, miraculously surviving from war and universal contempt.”

The response was immediate, and from 1949 painters, sculptors, engravers and ceramists of all nationalities flocked to Alba-la-Romaine. French, English, Colombians, Chileans, Hungarians, Spanish, Americans, Dutch, and Swedish, fleeing the traumatic memory of the war and hoping for better days among the ruins of the hamlet of La Roche.

They have in common their Parisian life in Montparnasse, their studies with the great masters of that time as well as the friendship of the Americans Jackson Pollock and Sam Francis, before becoming established artists themselves with some being part of a workshop created by Stanley William Hayter.

All were in search of new values and a new meaning in their lives, and the call of André Lhote renewed their enthusiasm. They do not hesitate to leave everything to go live in a small village in southern Ardèche.

When they arrive in Alba-la-Romaine they are seduced by the beauty of the landscapes. The wild cliffs, the limpid water of the Escoutay river, the wellaligned vines, the wind in the hills, the blazing sunsets, the starry nights and especially the “white light” that they found nowhere somewhere else and which suddenly reveals itself to them when they leave the mountains and arrive in the plain of Alba-la-Romaine.

They buy about thirty houses, and thanks to the impulse of a man keen on history, Mr. Delarbre, and the competent dynamism of the mayor, Mr. Rieu, the hamlet of La Roche finds a new life. The artists begin to reassemble the ruins, sometimes without roofs or windows, with half-collapsed walls, like real builders, wielding trowels and hammers before finding their brushes and chisels.

The inhabitants, seeing this “invasion” arriving who speak a dozen different languages, was quite taken aback. Then as time went on they got used to it while some rejoiced that these characters create a little animation in the village.

Their behaviour and their habits continued to arouse a sometimes ironic curiosity. Their artistic work especially. However, good neighbourly ties are created in the village. The inspiring landscapes, the simple and peaceful life of the peasants, in harmony with nature, contribute to exchanges and encounters. Artists also discovered the treasures that the earth has hidden for centuries - the fossils of animals and plants and the vestiges of the GalloRoman and medieval times amazed them.

Their creativity was renewed, and they began a new life of intense work and shared joy, despite the harshness of the winters and the lack of comfort, without running water or electricity. Clothes were washed at a cold water tap in the street and the only bathroom in the village was available to women. They sleep in cots, sometimes with a solitary dog under the blanket to keep warm.

The mutual aid is great on the part of the inhabitants of the village. The mason helps with the restoration of the ruins, a farmer, with his team of oxen, goes to look for wood on the Coiron plateau for the sculptures of one or the other, the postman sometimes sculpts with them, in return some help with agricultural work. Beautiful friendships are formed. They have a deep respect for each other. Village women become “adoptive mothers”. They take the place of artist mothers who devote themselves fully to their work. These generous women marked the memory of the children of that time who never forgot them.

The chatelaine, Alice Braun, former star dancer of the Paris Opera, thanks to her kindness and generosity is nicknamed

“Mammy d’Honneur”. A place of meetings and a place of celebrations, the castle is open to everyone, including cats and dogs wandering in the village.

The first exhibitions, from 1950 to 1952, took place at the public school at the same time as the votive festival, then the artists planned to find a permanent place to exhibit their works. It was at this time that Mr. Houdayer, who ran an architectural firm in Paris, with his wife, fitted out a permanent exhibition hall in a house they called “La Petite Chaumière” in reference to “La Grande Chaumière” in Montparnasse, drawing and painting academy that many artists have attended. La Petite chateau@chateaudevogue.net www.chateaudevogue.net

Chaumière becomes a place of very lively exchanges, with debates on art and literature sometimes giving rise to tumultuous disagreements. However, the artists evoke the great respect that there is between them. No one felt superior to others, no one allowed themselves the slightest disparaging criticism of the work of a colleague.

From 1955, some of these artists who arrived in 1949 settled in nearby villages or returned to their country of origin. Others remain in Alba and their children still live in their parents’ homes. For years, artists have succeeded each other in Alba-la-Romaine, which has become a real “City of the Arts”.

The exhibition of works by these artists is open every day between 10.30am and 1pm and 2pm to 6pm until the 2nd of July 2023 at the Château de Vogüé and is organised by the association Vivante Ardèche and the children and friends of Alba. The nearest airports are Lyon and Marseille from where you can drive or get a train. Don’t miss this part of previously undocumented art history!

CHRISTINE XUEREB SEIDU