Madeleine Gera’s current exhibition Eloise Halberd Valletta (Valletta 2006-2007; Valletta 1940-1942; Cafes, Bars, Yesterday and Today), launched last Friday, explores Valletta as a city that echoes the past. Visiting a number of bars and former hangouts, Madeleine identifies the texture of a place, or personifies it through a character that she imagines would have frequented it.
“Tico Tico, the Rexford, Captain Caruana’s, The Morning Star – most of these places don’t exist anymore,” says Madeleine, explaining how she researched old bars and hangouts in Valletta that were famous during Second World War period. “This exhibition has two timeframes, as I refer to Valletta in the present and during the war. Having a studio there has really made me aware of the different sides to the city.”
Madeleine Gera is currently a full-time artist and spends most of her time working hard in the studio on Republic Street. She tells me how she is not the kind of person who’s at her heart’s content when cut off in the peace and quiet of the countryside. “I love cities,” she says, “I can’t think of anything more boring than having a studio in the middle of nowhere. I’ve lived in cities away from Malta and, in Valletta, I feel like I’m in a quartiere in Rome or in Florence; I feel there’s the pulse of a city, even though it’s small.”
Contrary to the way artists tend to be romantically stereotyped as solitary recluses, Madeleine likes the idea that she can step out of her studio to go have a coffee, buy the paper and go on her inquisitive expeditions through the trodden streets of the city. The theme of her exhibition is timely as it is topical, considering the attention the city has been receiving over the past few years. There seems to be a new awareness of the city’s cultural and historical value that people are catching onto, yet her fascination has nothing to do with the current trend, Madeleine insists. It has to go beyond being fashionable, of course, she explains. “It’s more about a genuine affection for the place. I feel that now I’m really beginning to discover it and what it means to be there. After all, it is our capital city and there are a lot of examples of fine architecture that are still quite intact and which ought to be preserved.”
Despite the fact that many of the paintings depict and are actually named after a number of different buildings and cafes, the collection features mainly human figures, in different clothing, moods and situations, lounging at the bar, eyeing the viewer and at times teasing him, daring him to figure out their connection to the setting. “I chose to represent, say, The Morning Star or the Rexford, not just by depicting the buildings or the interior of the bar, but by painting the kind of person that would have been inhabiting the place or working there. I thought this was an innovative way of looking at these bars and spaces.”
The figures indeed are suggestive of a stylish, cabaret-like environment that invites you to conceive our presently often dingy and desolate city in its times of life and splendour. A sultry, sinuous woman beckons the viewer with a piercing stare while leisurely holding a cocktail, in the cover piece of the collection, Cocktails at the Rexford. In another, Last drink at Captain Caruana’s, a soldier gives us a sinister wink. In The Jewish Violinist, you almost want to listen to the melancholic sound coming out of the squeaky violin played by the pallid musician.
Madeleine has been working full-time as an artist for six years now. Having started studying art at the age of 16 with a church painter, Madeleine received a very traditional formation.
“When I was in my 20s, I moved away from it and totally rebelled.” Madeleine went through different periods in her artistic career, in which there were times when she also chose to go abstract. However, her intermittent travels to Florence where she also furthered her studies, coupled with her solid technical background, made her want to go back to her artistic origins. “This is a totally different approach to painting, in which I’ve been working a lot with models on figurative pieces or on portraiture, painting from life in the naturalistic tradition.”
Madeleine’s recent approach to painting sounds very laborious and disciplined indeed, a quality inherent in her own character. A session in her studio can take three full hours in the morning, and another three full hours in the afternoon, working on the same model. Her lifestyle now is in fact very intense. Having acquired a studio separate from her home a year ago, she is immersed in her painting all the time, which can get quite exhausting.
Madeleine also teaches several art courses at the studio.
Her view of her profession is not dreamy and airy, but very direct and down-to-earth. She emphasises that technical skill is essential. “My work involves a lot of technique, not merely muse. It’s not about being in the mood; it’s a bit like classical dance – you have to keep practicing. I keep reminding myself that I need to keep doing a lot of drawing from life. Otherwise, you let time pass and it’s amazing how your skills will go. There is an expressive side to my work, of course, or else it would just be academic, which is not what I want. But you need to have a foundation first.”
“I think the quality of the work in this collection is one of the best I ever had,” Madeleine tells me.
Although she has spent a lot of time and money on the large oil paintings the exhibition is made up of, Madeleine says that when she started this project two years ago, she just went with her heart. She cannot tell what the future has in store for her. “In the last six years, I’ve been spending a lot of time in Italy painting over there. It all depends on how this exhibition goes.”
For the time being, we’ll kill time loitering through the old streets of a weary city and lose ourselves to its glorious, withering past.
Eloise Halberd Valletta is at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta until 21 May. Part of the proceeds will be donated to the Salesians of Don Bosco. For more information visit the artist’s website:
www.madeleinegera.com.