R Gallery Malta Exhibition: AWOL

A metaphysical thread for the works of 4 artists: Maxine Attard, Charlie Cauchi, Roxman Romeo Gatt and Duška Malešević Art, Education, default

art by Nataša Pantović

In her press release for “AWOL” the gallery’s first group show at R Gallery, in Sliema, Malta, one of the curators Helena Staelens  provides us with a clue to the title AWOL, absent from where one should be; a void or missing relationship she sees between various forms of art. This group exhibition featured an assemblage of works by Maxine Attard, Charlie Cauchi, Roxman Romeo Gatt and Duška Malešević.

R Gallery Malta Exhibition Awol, A metaphysical thread for the works of 4 artists Maxine Attard, Charlie Cauchi, Roxman Romeo Gatt and Duška Maleševic

I’ve seen the works when visited the event where artists spoke about their practice and body of work presented in this show. This gathering was skillfully moderated by Sam Vassallo, where the public was invited to an evening of artistic discussions.

The red sofa that greet the viewer upon entry was the center stage for the discourses about absence. Metaphysically transcending each personal artistic story to “AWOL” or a Void. “In the physical experience it can allude to a subject that is not visible or tangible, yet still present. In a nostalgic sense, it connects as something that has faded, disappeared or is lost in time, kept alive in the residues of personal and collective memory. In a framework of the corporeal, bodily transformation simultaneously fills and creates absence in the material world, often defying social approval and norms.” The exhibition story board narrates.

The exhibition is segregated: on the two largest walls of the central gallery, facing each other, Charlie Cauchi has presented her large paintings. The night life in metropolitan areas with a motion picture viewing experience, transports us to 1960s Soho, a peep behind the curtain, she explores the naked female body moving. 

R Gallery Malta Exhibition AWOL  Charlie Cauchi, the work forms part of Cauchi’s wider London Soho project

Past these walls and into the gallery, four artworks are installed simply but effectively. A new work by Maxine Attard. At the gallery’s back corner with a one-to-one scale photographic reproduction we find work of Duška Malešević. As admirable as the attempt to draw viewers in the void created by fragments against the framework of images, the subtlety and complexity of these well-chosen and sensitively installed artistic projects are aesthetic testimony that speak for itself.

R Gallery Malta Exhibition AWOL A metaphysical thread for the works of 4 artists Maxine Attard, Charlie Cauchi, Roxman Romeo Gatt and Duška Malešević

Does it matter that the curatorial quest for “A Void” or “AWOL” is awkward? For sure, it does. in Roxman case, the difference is between a premise that engenders identification as a trans-gender and artwork that implies the viewer’s complicity with the subject.

About the artists

Maxine Attard is a visual artist and a graduate of the University of Brighton, U.K. (MA Fine Arts). Maxine works in multiple media including works on paper, wood, and found material. She is based in Leipzig, Germany.

Charlie Cauchi is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker living in Malta. She holds an MA in Film Studies from the Queen Mary University of London. 

Romeo Roxman Gatt, the artist has been working with themes of humanising and interacting with consumer objects, making the inanimate iconic and fetishised.

Duška Malešević, born in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, lived and worked in Berlin, Sydney, and Rome where she got her Master’s in Psychology of Art (at La Sapienza University). She is a visual artist working mainly in the field of contemporary urban, and minimal photography.