The exhibition Culture is Past, Art is Future aims to highlight the current approach towards culture being used as a tool of preservation and conservation, rather than step towards evolved realizations of current practices.

Art is integrated in culture, but it is also independent, its strength lies in  subverting and revealing the underlying, unifying all forms of contemporary art.

The painters, installation art, internet art, glitch makers, all should aim to present alternatives derived from culture.

We have enough of superficiality going on, art cannot be superficial in order to survive. Art is independent from culture because art is done by an individual or small collective on their own.

Culture is a collective effort by people with a common interest - financial, religious, any common grounds which creates a cause. Most often it is not a culture of creating that is being pushed, but that of looking back and if possible fossilizing outdated structures and traditions, "selling them as new ideas by polishing them up to give them a cheap and tacky lustre that reeks of nostalgia and newly printed banknotes".

It is problematic having such vision pushed forward, it establishes a dangerous ideology for future generations to dig in the past rather than shape the future with their art. Culture is not presented as a stepping stone for present and future generations to look forward, but as an agent of preservation not of provocation.

The exhibition Culture is past, art is future exists parallel with the opening of Valletta2018 Capital of Culture. Body of work on show consists of paintings and a series of 18 oil pastel drawings, some being part of a series exhibited online between May and August 2017.

The exhibition is being held at Iniala 5 Gallery, Valletta and will come to an end on 27 January.