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Published 14/08/02
Norbert Francis Attard
Next month (September) should have seen the figure of St Peter suspended face
downwards between two Doric pillars which flank the lost altar of St Peter's
Church in Liverpool, once the Catholic church of the Polish community in the
city and now a venue for the Liverpool Biennale. Carved in polystyrene, and
held in position by bands of red fabric, the figure was installed in March when
it called to mind St Peter's role in building the Catholic church and the current
precarious state of religion. The installation was a dramatic reinvigoration
of the interior of a building which, built in 1788, has sadly outlived its original
purpose. Commissioned for the Biennale, the installation titled Tu Es Petrus,
was by the Maltese artist, Norbert Francis Attard.
St Peter is, of course, a distinctive figure in the history of Catholicism
in Malta and it is interesting to observe the artist making connections between
his own culture and the location of this installation in Liverpool. However,
because the director of the Biennale decided to give St Peter's Church to another
artist, Attard's installation had to be removed. Instead, he was given The Oratory
close to the Anglican cathedral where he has created another installation called
Beyond Conflict. Here, Attard has woven red and green fabric bands between the
columns on the outside of the building in a way that seems to both emphasise
and reduce the scale of the facade. Obvious entry to the building is denied.
This is the third in a series of installations created in Britain
this year by Attard, who although correctly described as an artist,
is in fact an architect, printmaker, painter, photographer and sculptor
whose latest preoccupation happens to be installations. For this
year’s Edinburgh Festival, for example, he created a piece
called Love Is All There Is within glass panels in the rear wall
of the Metro Bar in the Apex Hotel. The panels contain many words
in red — words like powerful, vibrant, Red Box and Red Giant
— which streamed across the panels like messages on a computer
screen. One might read this as a piece of contemporary grafitti
broken up in one area by a thick, red diagonal bar with more words,
only this time reversed in white, and in another by a triangular
feature containing larger, handwritten words such as Violence, Revolution,
Love and Hate. The installation was, in fact, multi-layered and
the diagonal bar was placed in front of an invisible window so that
the reversed lettering came to life when the sun came out.
This installation — and that created in St Andrews earlier
this summer — rely on text and the colour red to communicate
passion and intensity. In the St Andrew’s piece, One Extreme
to Another, Attard utilised a simple vocabulary of form accompanied
by text created by students at St Leonard’s School. Bands of
white fabric were suspended between two sycamore trees supporting
a table and a computer keyboard, and were embellished with words
that seemed to gather speed as they streamed towards the table and
keyboard before passing out into the ether. Serenity and passion,
nature and artifice — the life force expressed by the garden
and its trees — all work to demonstrate how Attard’s installations
are specific to their location. They are also open to different
interpretations and meanings. From afar, the installation looked
taught and rigid, an ideal medium for the transmission of words.
But close up, the fabric was full of life, its edges trembling in
the wind. Perhaps this signified Nature itself trembling on the
edge of an abyss.
Attard’s installations date from 1996, the year when he decided
to give up his career as an architect working in Malta and Gozo.
Now Attard works internationally and indeed has exhibited his paintings
in many different countries. However, his seminal influences arise
from his Maltese background though much of his inspiration may come
from elsewhere. Trained as an architect — not as a painter
— he acquired his art education from books and from local people,
including his uncle, Frank Portelli, a pioneer of modern art in
Malta, and Victor Pasmore, who settled in Malta in the 1960s. Thus
paintings and drawings done in the 1960s echo the work of Picasso,
Mondrian, Klee, Giacometti and Pollock, and are remarkable for their
virtuosity. Indeed, Attard tells me that he finds creating things
far too easy. Maybe that is why he has changed his medium at regular
intervals throughout his life.
The early work, often depicting women (in one case, with the simplicity
of line of Eric Gill, in another using line as if it were a computer
print out) was followed by the much more colourful images of the
1970s. These included exotic views of the Gozitan landscape (normally
characterised by the sandy brown colour of its soft, globigerina
limestone, the island can burst into colour with Spring flowers).
And the landscape often featured the sinewy meanderings of a slender
snake. In these paintings, Attard seemed to throw off outside influences
and revel in bursts of life and renewal, but in the series of drawings,
etchings, lithographs and silkscreens that followed (from 1977—87),
an outside influence in the form of Escher returns. Suddenly, the
joy of the previous work is replaced by meticulously drawn hilltop
towns with labyrinthine walls and inner streets peopled (when they
are peopled) by minute figures who are completely dominated by their
environment. And, in most cases, the towns are in monotone or in
very soft pinks, browns, greens and blues. They are often abandoned,
isolated and claustrophobic. They also reflect the way in which
Gozo’s hilltop villages seem to grow out of the stone of which
they are built and are full of narrow streets. Some images, indeed,
make direct references to the island by incorporating photographs
of the church in Gharb or the saltpans outside Marsalforn.
The early 1980s saw difficult years for Attard, during which an
emotional crisis was signalled by what have been described as his
breakdown ink drawings — 45 images reflecting despair and helplessness
which, artistically, make references to Picasso’s Vollard Suite.
The period also includes the very tranquil lithographs and screenprints
known as the Mihrab, Kimono and Mandela Series. Reflecting Attard’s
interest in Zen Buddhism and his travels in the Middle East, the
very simplified abstract shapes, or shapes based on the kimono,
are also notable for their soft hues (some, in fact, repeating the
colours seen in some of the images of the Walled Cities Series).
As the artist says of the mihrab (the decorated slab used in a mosque
to point the way to Mecca), ‘In it, I found the ideal form
to convey what I felt. It suited me for many reasons. It was a doorway.
It pointed upwards. It was architectural’.
During the first half of the 1990s, Attard continued both to suggest
the turmoil of inner life in watercolours depicting the chaos and
constant regeneration of the cosmos, and the excitement of a new
chapter in his life as shown by works in acrylic on canvas that
have titles such as Love At First Sight and The Radiant Present.
Both their colours and abstract shapes have an affinity with Kandinsky’s
work of the early 1920s. By the end of this period, however, Attard
realised that there was no reason why his work should remain two-dimensional
so, in 1997, constructions began, often reflecting on man’s
relationship with Nature — and his increasing divorce from
Nature.
One, called Accumulations, consisted of a series of black plastic
bags within square wooden frames (an aesthetic use of mundane materials).
Stretching along a couple of metres of wall, it is a piece of sculpture
that could also be described as an installation.
Attard is an artist whose roots remain firmly in Malta and Gozo
while he works in several continents. His own country offers him
specific locations. The art centre, St James Cavalier in Valletta,
was the setting for a poetic evocation of space using nine slide
projectors, a swinging pendulum containing a video monitor, candles
and torches which celebrated the work of Mattia Preti, whose paintings
are in the nearby St John’s Co-Cathedral where many of the
Knights of St John are buried. And, last month, Attard completed
an experimental work in a tenement in the centre of Valletta: a
recreation of a beach, a location associated with the natural world
that was situated within the built environment. As visitors cleared
away the ‘sand’ with their feet to read obscured quotations
from Alan Botton’s recent book, The Art of Travel, there was
an olefactory revelation - the sand was not sand but sawdust, the
detrious of a built environment. This installation was about things
that were not what they seemed. As always with the work of Attard,
the installation had a multiplicity of meanings.
Richard Carr
Richard Carr has contributed to
I See Red, a book on Attard’s installations being published
during the Liverpool Biennale, and is currently researching the
relationship between Attard’s installations and architecture.
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