Raphael Vella, a creator of installations, had his latest piece refused for exhibition at Life Model, a recent collective show organised by the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts.

It was turned down because it included a photograph of the president, already George Abela at the time, inserted into an orgiastic silhouette. Similar things were done with photographs of some politicians, but the law of the land makes a special case of mocking the president, unlike with those politicians who would have had to resort to the usual means of suing for libel if they could be bothered to do so.

When his installation was rejected, Vella tried to create in the newspapers a ruckus about “censorship”, riding on the back of the recent – and still ongoing – controversy about the play Stitching. He missed entirely the point that one cannot reasonably expect exhibition organisers to include in a show something which will expose them to law suits (by touchy politicians) and to prosecution by the police (for disparaging the president of the republic).

Another exhibition organiser may have wished to court controversy by showing the piece and making a big thing about being sued. Or it may have taken a calculated risk on the president laughing it off and the featured politicians being too embarrassed to sue. But this exhibition organiser wished to do neither of those two things. If Vella is so keen on freedom of expression then he must know that this includes the right not to express, publish or show things if one so wishes.

His desire to force the Malta Council to show his work against its wishes has more to do with fascism than liberalism. But then I have noticed that many of those who describe themselves as “liberal” in this country are actually the opposite, and have scant respect for the rights and freedoms that they do not need or wish to have themselves.

Raphael Vella and his supporters conclude that it was fear of being stuck in court for the next few years that led the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts to decide against showing his piece. The idea that it might have had rather more to do with good manners, civility and better taste than he has appears to have escaped them entirely.

I know but a few of the members of that council, but those few do not strike me as the sort who would think of photographs of the president and politicians imposed onto pornographic images as anything other than very poor manners and the sort of university student humour you might expect from those who have yet to develop intellectually and emotionally. And I say “university” rather than “sixth-form college” merely to be kind.

There is something else that Vella and his supporters miss altogether. It is not the inclusion of politicians and the president that offends, but the choice of individuals that is deemed inappropriate. The inclusion of Silvio Berlusconi’s photograph in a pornographic scene would strike nobody as inappropriate, least of all him. Including George Abela, whether he is the president or not, in a similar scenario makes the artist, and not him, ridiculous. Lampooning and mockery are effective only if there is at least a slight kernel of truth there.

Unfortunately for those of us who find such public posturing to be exceedingly tedious, Raphael Vella has interpreted the refusal of his work as a sign of its greatness and significance. In a magnificent non sequitur, he has concluded that because the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts turned his work down, then people must see it.

He has come to an arrangement with those who manage St James Cavalier. Pornolitics Remix, as he has named his work (perhaps to evoke further impressions of sixth-formers giggling as they stick photographs of their least favourite people onto choice pages of Hustler) will be shown there. He has “spiced it up”, he told the press, saying that there will be an “interactive experience” on opening night “that will leave politicians baffled as to who the artist is and leave them with no one to sue.”

I think the man is getting ahead of himself. He is so thrilled at his own derring-do and brave foray into the world of – deep breath here – criticising politicians that he is assuming people actually care and that what he is doing is exceptional. People who do things for the first time tend to think this way and to lose all sense of perspective. I don’t wish to deflate his expectations of high summer drama, but the most likely reaction to Pornolitics Remix is a series of protracted yawns.

Vella doesn’t think he will be sued, though – and not because his work is a tiresome variation on a decades-old hackneyed theme, but because politicians know that if they sue him, they will become “the laughing-stock of Europe.” Ho-hum.

If there is a better example of a Maltese artist thinking that he has a privileged insight into politics merely because he “creates”, and that there is no need to actually monitor what happens in the political scene, please show me it. I hardly think that an obscure Maltese MP suing an even more obscure Maltese installation artist for exposing a photograph of his face stuck to a naked body in an obscure exhibition space in a walled city on a tiny island is going to make the front-page “silly season” headlines of the European broadsheets, and especially not when Silvio Berlusconi is around.

We almost didn’t get to see Pornolitics Remix, because Vella thought at first that he would “leave it to our imagination” and let us “fantasise about whatever we want”. This strikes me as presumptuous, given that the story would have passed most people by as they packed their barbecues, hampers and the kitchen sink before heading for the beach. Beyond that, he may be unaware that the only people who fantasise about the sexual activities of Maltese politicians are probably in the minority and rather sad. There is clearly so little glamour involved.

His reworked installation has been “enlarged”, he says – an unfortunate choice of word, given the context – and “people will have to involve themselves and take certain decisions”. The mind shrinks away in horror, even though Vella has taken great care to specify that no politicians are shown in the act of fornication, which is not so great a relief for them as it is for us.

Raphael Vella appears to think that this is all about freedom of expression. It is not. He is free to create his piece and show it to the public, in his own home if necessary. And those whom he has involved in it are free to sue him, should they wish to do so. Meanwhile, the rest of us are free to say that it would be nice if Malta, for once, ceased to lag four decades behind the western world.

Sticking photographs of politicians onto images of naked bodies might have been naughty, daring, ground-breaking and shocking when Jimi Hendrix sang at Woodstock and then passed out. In 2009 – yes, even in Malta – it’s anything but. It’s try-hard, yawn-making, unimaginative, b-o-r-i-n-g, flogged to death and intellectually retarded.

Raphael Vella has accused those who refused him space of being backward and stuck in a time warp. I think the accusation can be more suitably applied to his efforts with Pornolitics Remixed. Be sure to wear your purple flares and funky teddy-bear fur when visiting this show. It’s been a while since the Vietnam War, but they’ve made their third comeback already. If, however, you wish to stick with the “retro daring” theme of the show, you can always break out the hot-pants – though not if you’re a man, of course. That would be too Bruno 2009.

As that film and the coverage of Berlusconi’s antics should have taught Raphael Vella, in the contemporary world there is only one way to deal with the subject of politicians and sex: with immense hilarity. Sadly, Vella hasn’t moved on from the days of John Profumo and Christine Keeler, when naughty things were scandalous rather than highly amusing matters for laughter while eating your popcorn.

It’s not his choice of subject matter that shocks me, but the fact that he’s still doing it in the 21st century.

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