ARTISTS
Aaron Bezzina
Part of my practice involves the notion of ‘anti-interactive’ work which refers to the creation of objects that appear as utilitarian (hence interactive) yet could be of peril to the viewer should any physical engagement be involved.
The ideas for such works arise from many sources, at times actively merging a series of words to ignite new ideas which in turn manifest as a drawing and at times double as a sculpture. Other ideas also arrive as dreams or come out of serendipity where images collide with text or spoken words in a chaotic or unplanned manner. Ideas for sculptures also arise from misinterpretation of my own notes and sketches. These moments are translated into drawings (or remain as text-based work ideas) and sometimes make the final cut as sculptures.
During this residency I will be physically absent from the gallery but will be sending ideas and drawings as they emerge. In the spirit of AI prompting for ideas and images, viewers are invited to interact with the set-up within the gallery by sending me prompts - words, and/or, phrases they’d like me to react to - which I will translate into drawings or ideas for sculptures throughout the duration of the project.
Tom Van Malderen
TS: As the rumour goes, Tom will make it a project of projects.
LM: As in, he can’t make up his mind?
TS: Probably more a case of him not being able to contain his enthusiasm and appetite for too many things at once. I’ve told him several times that he should focus, find “his thing” — like famous artists do. Then again, I’m not sure fame ever helps with clarity.
LM: True… and what’s left to be found anyway?
TS: You’ve got a point there, friend. From what I’ve been told he’s going to open with what he refers to as his most complete collection of useless sponges — some sort of minotaur objects, half-polymer foam, half-timber.
LM: Useless, but rather focused, I would argue!
TS: Hold on, hold on… he’s then going to explore at least six further works in six weeks, including some of his pet materials: marble, timber, fabric, rope, tassels, lights, and mirrors.
LM: That sounds a bit ambitious, don’t you think?
TS: What’s ambitious now that artists no longer just exhibit, but also ‘publish’ and feed us art through notifications… art is everywhere!
LM: Oh yes, too many images for a single gaze.
Duška Malešević
The name Sliema is believed to come from the triconsonant Semitic root Š-L-M, meaning peace, safety, wholeness. Yet today, the name sits uneasily with the lived reality of the place.
Once a fishing village and a quiet retreat, Sliema is now a congested, vertical landscape of
cranes, speculative construction, short-let apartments, and transient tourism. The so-called
peace is fractured by overdevelopment, gentrification, unsustainable waste management, and
the tension between local memory and fleeting presence.
My project begins with this linguistic root Š-L-M - a word that suggests harmony, now
strained by the noise of change.
This project will explore that tension by weaving together photography, text, postcards,
installation, and performance. My aim is not to resolve the contradictions but to hold them in
view: the fractured peace of Sliema today.
Laura Besançon
I begin a residency with a sense of surrender, openness and curiosity. To be in a particular place for an extended period, allows daily experience and place to reshape initial thoughts and ideas. This residency is an opportunity to linger, in an area dense with commerce and tourism, yet also layered with memory.
For the start of this residency, I present a starting point: a table of vintage Malta souvenirs /
paraphernalia, which I’ve gathered over the years. These fragments form part of a personal archive that reflects both my love of found objects and my instinct to collect things I “might one day use in an artwork.” They are tokens of a Malta that feels distant, less overdeveloped and less consumed by mass tourism, yet they also reveal how the island has long been shaped, simplified, and sold through imagery. My relationship to these objects might also be shaped by identity. With a mother from Sliema, and a French father, and an appearance that often leads people to mistake me for a foreigner, I’ve lived with a kind of double perspective. All the while I was born and raised in Ħal Tarxien. I’m as we say 1⁄2+1⁄2.. nofs u nofs. Perhaps this is why I am drawn to souvenirs?. Objects that perform belonging and otherness at once?. Even their name, souvenir, recalls the French verb se souvenir: to remember. These materials will act as the seeds of research during the residency. They may remain as objects, or be transformed through photography, mixed media, or sculptural interventions.
Alongside this working archive, I am also presenting an ongoing piece, no-reply (unread). An enclosed letterbox that will never be opened: a sort of archive of unread messages. It is a work I carry with me, gathering letters from different people and places, including a previous residency. A “widespread work,” it shifts and accumulates over time. I invite you to write and deposit your own words, unseen, but still part of the work.
Julian Vassallo
For this residency, the gallery becomes both studio and darkroom, a place where images are not only displayed but also produced. Over six weeks, a sequence of black-and-white photographs will take shape, and printed by hand in real time. What unfolds is not simply a body of work, but a process in which making and showing are inseparable.
The photographs stem from a domestic studio that doubles as a living space, where the routines of daily life merge with the conditions of artistic production. These gestures are reimagined through a dancer’s body - a surrogate presence that enacts moments of waking and dwelling.
In this translation, self becomes other, and documentation gives way to performance.
The work reflects on the convergence of living and working spaces, the rhythms of daily ritual, and the physicality of photographic practice. By relocating the act of printing into the gallery, the artist makes visible a process that is usually hidden, offering audiences a view into both the images and the means of their creation. Ultimately, this series functions as a quiet chronology: a visual record of time passed and space inhabited, of a body in flux, and of a practice unfolding between home and gallery, private and public, material and immaterial.
Rachelle Bezzina
This space holds an open-ended inquiry into memory, lineage, and embodied knowledge. The artist begins by returning to a personal archive, using objects once held by her grandmother to guide an exploration of what is inherited, what is hidden, and what is spoken aloud.
Throughout the residency, Rachelle invites women to share reflections on their matriarchal lineage. These exchanges unfold across two chairs and become material for transformation.
Through the act of sharing, fragments of memory shift — some surface, some resist. The artist questions what to ignore, what to archive, and what to embody, allowing stories to move forward through gesture, language, and form.
The space is both a site of process and an invitation.
