Review /Gallery / Valletta Contemporary Venice 2022
VALLETTA CONTEMPORARY:
Siphoning the currents of a global art world into Malta’s capital
V
alletta Contemporary (VC) is Malta’s premier space for contemporary art. This gallery prompts and gives home to Malta’s diverse cultural community, championing contemporary art as a catalyst for discussion, social cohesion, and cultural discovery. The META Foundation runs the independent exhibition space and art gallery, and since its opening in 2018, has become the anchor for a new cultural quarter in Malta’s capital, Valletta. Located at the lower east end of the city – on the periphery and away from the main centre – VC has been an agent of regeneration and activity to a lesser-known part of the city. PALIMPSESTS OF THE HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY The gallery’s physical space was conceived, designed, and realised by its director – artist and architect Norbert Francis Attard. Built within a 400-year-old for-
Pristine Paradise by Nadine Baldow
mer warehouse, the space merges past with present, with contemporary interiors juxtaposing sleek, crisp materiality against the original features of its vaulted Valletta property. This layering of history speaks to the gallery’s philosophy and its approach to the exhibition of contemporary art. Its exhibitions and events are mettled in their intention to interrogate cultural contexts, to provoke unconventional readings, and to jolt the typical experience of seeing art in three-dimensional space.
Carlos Coronas
Artpaper / 026
A VESSEL FOR TRANSMUTATION The architecture of the gallery becomes an agent to the transformative power of the art it carries. In its inaugural exhibition, The Dreamed Territories (2018), Car-
