There are several reasons to admire the artist Gabriel Caruana. But that quality which truly defines him is his sense of community which is essential to his philosophy as an artist and as a promoter of modern and contemporary art. Caruana's artistic practice is built on the principle of inclusivity; everything can be used to produce a work of art, and all objects have inherent artistic properties. He is one of the first Maltese artists, together with Antoine Camilleri, to indiscriminately make use of everyday objects as well as conventional art materials, and many of his ideas were emerging contemporaneously to those of many international pioneering artists and movements. In fact, materiality is of secondary importance to Caruana. The necessity to create art superseded the consideration for material hierarchies.
Furthermore, Caruana has dedicated much effort to building up infrastructures for local artists. Throughout his artistic career Caruana has constantly pushed for contemporary art to be accessible to the public. His major contribution to this objective was the setting up of the Mill Arts, Culture and Crafts Centre (MACCC) at il-Mitħna ta' Ġanu/Tal-Maħlut in Birkirkara, one of the first modern and contemporary art centres to be opened in Malta.
This early eighteenth-century mill became the home of the MACCC and was opened to the public in June 1990. Since then it has been operating under the directorship of Caruana and his wife Mary Rose Caruana.
In April 2016, Caruana, his daughter Raffaella Zammit, together with Prof. Richard England and Umberto Buttigieg, founded the Gabriel Caruana Foundation (GCF), together with others, in order to develop upon and preserve the artist's legacy. Moreover, the objectives of the GCF are to encourage and provide opportunities for established and emerging contemporary artists and to promote the works of modern and contemporary Maltese artists on a national and international scale.
The first exhibition organised by the GCF at the Mill was an intimate display of selected works by contemporary ceramicists and also by Caruana. This two-week long exhibition (4th to 17th June 2016) entitled 'De-Form Re-Form', was held in conjunction with the second edition of an Italian event called Buongiorno Ceramica! Buongiorno Ceramica! is organised by the Associazione Italiana Città della Ceramica and Artex Centro per l'Artigianato Artistico e Tradizionale della Toscana.
Caruana's contribution to the ceramic arts has been pioneering for Malta and for the international art scene. Ceramics were ideal for him to experiment with the notion of the spontaneous creative act wherein the role of the artist partially gives way to the incalculable element of chance. Spontaneity and instinctiveness are embedded in his works, and this enables him to generate organic yet non-naturalistic forms. Caruana's very direct and unfiltered working method is very much linked to his 30-year involvement with the carnival festivities (1958-1988). Colour, celebration, community, improvisation and subversion are all quintessential characteristics of carnival which are reflected in Caruana and his art.
However, the most significant art historical innovation instigated by Caruana in Malta was his transformation of ceramics, usually categorised as utilitarian craft, into works of art. This development is particular to the modern age, and Caruana worked closely with ceramic artists around the world, including with the Faenza community where ceramic art production is most promoted and celebrated.
'De-Form Re-Form' exemplified the effect of Caruana's legacy which has opened up a progressive sphere of modern and contemporary ceramic art production. I do not think that any other Maltese artist succeeded in instituting an artistic culture which is on a par with leading contemporary developments. Underlining the links between Caruana and younger ceramic artists, the exhibition examined the deformation and transformation of ceramics from functional forms to pure form and from identifiable objects to abstract shapes.
The artists who exhibited were Victor Agius, Tony Briffa, Andrea Pullicino and George Muscat. Each artist used the medium differently and created individual styles. The common link between them was their investigation into the potentials of ceramics as a way of challenging formal conventions by re-defining the limits of the art object.
Agius's studies of natural and non-natural objects accentuated the overlooked beauty of everyday things; a rock and a sofa. Agius' casts of these items permitted the viewer to contemplate the details and material qualities of each. Briffa's polychromatic creatures naturalised the ceramic medium. His imaginative sculptural objects appeared as animate beings, and, like Agius's pieces yet following a diverse trajectory, traversed the boundaries between the organic and the inorganic.
So did Pullicino's works inhabit the boundaries of definition. The large and beautiful bowls were both utilitarian and artistic, but leaned more towards the latter as their experimental capacity distracted one from the traditional function of the bowl-like objects. Lastly, Muscat's ceramic works demonstrated a connection to Caruana's philosophy of chance. Muscat literally blew up parts of ceramic cubes with the intention of showing the results of these explosive interventions. He also exhibited sculptures of compressed ceramic objects.
The ceramic arts have burgeoned exponentially in Malta, yet have not been a topic of much scholarly attention. Dr. Irene Biolchini recently completed a PhD thesis, under the supervision of Dr. Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci, on the Catalan artist Miquel Barceló who is one of the most important living contemporary artists working in ceramics. The Modern and Contemporary Art Programme within the Department of History of Art, University of Malta, headed by Schembri Bonaci, is organising an international conference to open up academic dialogue on the development of ceramics in the past and present centuries. The conference will centre on the ceramic production of Lucio Fontana, one of the major avant-garde figures of the twentieth-century who created ground-breaking ceramic art. The aim is study the influence of Fontana's aesthetics and theories within the Mediterranean region and beyond, with specific focus on Fontana's adaptation of Baroque principles.
The ceramic art of Gabriel Caruana will be debated within this context, in relation to the work of notable international ceramic artists. It is one of main objectives of the Modern and Contemporary Art Programme to discuss and study Maltese art in conjunction with global developments.
More information may be found on the conference website: https://mediterraneanceramics.wordpress.com/