Kevin Attard is putting on an exhibit of abstract paintings at the Local Council offices in Gzira. “Art at local councils is usually more geared towards landscape, flowers and traditional exhibits…but they have kindly accepted to show my work because they were looking for something different,” says Kevin.

All 14 works of art have an interesting background story.

“I painted two of them four years ago, as part of a project fusion between different media: poetry, mime, painting and sculpture, storytelling and video projections. It all started from the same point, a piece of writing, which all of us could take in any direction we wanted. As for the other paintings,they were done after some friends of mine went to live on their own for the first time. We used to meet up regularly, influencing each other, and working on each other’s work. We did it deliberately and were not at all territorial about our work – someone else would continue my painting for example. Four of the paintings are therefore interpretative portraits, or perhaps caricatures of the people in this house.”

The other eight paintings are compositions using just yellow, green, white, orange and black to make a completely abstract background. “When I used to take figure drawing classes I would end up doing caricatures, so I have enlarged these so that they are now projected on an 80 x 80 frame – resulting in a contrast between the abstract and these caricatures.”

Kevin Attard’s exhibition (“it’s deliberately untitled, so that viewers can bring their own reality with them”) will remain open until 7 February.

Viewing hours are from 9am to 5pm, weekdays only.