Pierre Portelli

P I E R R E P O R T E L L I selectedworks1998•2007

My work investigates processes of change, the meeting of social worlds. It challenges the idea of the constancy of meaning as the sole prerogative of the artist. The works are meant to incite interaction: physical and intellectual to willing participants ready to rouse themselves from the stupour of passivity. The viewer is no longer a passive onlooker but becomes an interactive part of the work. The barrier between the onlooker and the work is transcended, thus permitting the meeting of different social worlds and the forging of many new meanings.

PARKED ON AN URBAN ROAD WITH ONE OR MORE WHEELS RESTING ON A FOOTWAY. LAND BETWEEN TWO CARRIAGEWAYS. GRASS VERGE, GARDEN OR SPACE

Is this a journey?

A search?

Are we looking at Icons?

Symbols?

Do we need to decipher messages?

Beliefs?

Bread, the sustenance, suspended An oracle, a Holy of Holies Each slice is life, energy, power Each loaf is God or is it?

Do we need a meaning?

Do we need to search for meanings?

I roll my hands over the soft rising dough and I knead and roll, and I knead and roll and caress it into shape.

Do we need a meaning?

Bread is precious, it is gold Do we need a meaning?

Bread is pain, is it suffering?

Bread is Holy, is it prayer?

Bread is fear ...with trembling hands I break it and share it.

Have you worked up an appetite?

Breadworks July 1998 Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, USA

Magicalmystical Holy Pictures and Tarot cards on board 240 cms x 120 cms original 1996 Available also as a photographic print or backlit print 2005

Reinterpreting Preti What was... is This is not a reflection Mirrored panels on wood, 240 x 201cms January 1999 St John’s CoCathedral, Valletta Malta

Reinterpreting Preti Art=Food=life This is not a reflection Photographic Print on RotaGraphic unit, 91cm x 91cm January 1999 National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta

ism engages the process of change ..... meaning built in process....the empowered viewer, discarding passivity, interacts with the work...Each intervention changes the physical state of the work, thus permitting new meaning structures to emerge, as valid as the pristine one.

For the duration of the exhibition, all the interventions where recorded on 4 cctv cameras mounted in each corner of the gallery.

The resulting video weaves a new narrative....taking the work on a new journey....with untold possibilities for constructiong new meanings.

ism Interactive hanging work, 4 cctv cameras National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta May 1999

ingrained Deep within a culture of mediterranean heat and sweat where thoughts become words and words become weapons an endless litany of ... gossip

Find the value of what x said to y about u Tin cans, elasticated cord, viewer activated sound, light, monitor and computer, internet connection, dedicated website Installation, St James Cavalier, Centre for Creativity, Malta November 2000

ROSA MASTIKA Bubble gum on board, gum ball machine, viewer participation ĂœBER, Portomaso, Malta January 2001

Then Judah told Onan to sleep with his brother’s wife, to do his duty as a husband’s brother and raise up issue for his brother.

But Onan knew that the issue would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his seed on the ground so as not to raise up issue for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight, and the Lord took his life.

Genesis 38:8-10

SPILL Armchair, wax, white-washed room, light Cityspaces, Valletta, Malta July 2002

Daily, for the first week, a photographic record is kept of the visitors viewing the work and the metamorphosis of the ice-block - thus ‘freezing’ the moments that will never happen again. Like the thawing ice and the dripping water, visitors come and go.

This work is about contrasts, about moments in time and about change.

Here warm and dry succumb to wet and cold. The tangled strands of knitting wool, wrestle for the prize and once the Rosemary resurfaces from within the melting ice, it diffuses its trapped fragrance again, like a new spring, a new breath. Rosemary - the healing herbal infusion in the midst of chaos!

4 ply below zero Ice, knitting yarn, rosemary herb, refrigerator, St James Cavalier, Centre for Creativity, Malta October 2002

One enters through thick plastic strip curtains along a path, again towards another strip curtain into a circular darkened arena illuminated with large curved backlit billboards on opposite sides (1.2 x 2.75mtrs). The viewer/participant is presented with an illuminated tableau. A blurred image of a nude male in motion pushing at an empty shopping trolley merges into a scenario of frail mortality. Angels and little children assist at the deathbed of a serene moribund and again the blurred nude male emerges out of the scenario … still pushing at his empty shopping trolley.

The blurred figure leads the viewer into a dramatic scene of horned and tailed demons, earthly trappings and lost souls and still the nude in motion pushes at his empty trolley.

These images, subscribing to a quasi marketing advertising strategy - as if to lure the client in choosing between a BigMac or a Double Whopper - questions the crossing of uncharted borders and related choices.

Crossing the ultimate border, material or immaterial, reverence or irreverence, logical or illogical, borders of insanity blur into sanity.

The dilemma of choice is ever-present and borders fade, recede and then re-establish themselves with alarming strength and ferocity.

Am I (the viewer/participant) the blurred image of the vulnerable nude figure?

After all, I am holding on to the trolley and I am going round in circles.

Can I choose what to put in my trolley? But … what from? …And still the borders remain blurred.

A note on the images The two images used in the piece represent “The Death in Grace” on one Billboard and “The Graceless Death of the Unrepentant” on the other billboard. The death in grace represents the catholic concept of meeting God in Grace i.e. renouncing the world and all its trappings, taking leave of loved ones and embracing God wholeheartedly.

The Graceless death is the unrepentant sinner who clutches stubbornly to the world, consequently renouncing God. These images, commonly found in Maltese homes of the past, were terrifying companions and source of many a nightmare for impressionable children confronted with malevolent devils pulling at familiar bedsheets.

Originally circulated by the church till around 30 years ago, they are nowadays a rarity and virtually unknown in todays Maltese homes.

Feel free to contact customer care Circular structure (3m in diameter), back-lit prints, plastic sheeting, shopping trolley Borders, Pinto Vaults, Valletta Malta, February 2003

Blank explores absence, alienation, isolation.

Blank is faceless.

Blank (detail) Marble Slab (2.8m x 1.4m), 100 ceramic ovals Escape, Old Prisons, Cittadella, Gozo May 2003

Tabernacle (detail) Bread, resin, gold leaf on board 85cms x 103cms 2003

Paradox on a knife’s edge Installation, 300 suspended carving knives Caravaggio una mostra impossibile Caraffa Stores, Birgu. May 2004

This installation strives to approximate the paradoxical nature of the artist Caravaggio.

The knife is a sharp paradoxical tool, it can create harmonious change and order in its everyday use or be the catalyst for chaos. The use of the knife reflects the turbulent dialectic within Caravaggio; on one hand a brilliantly sharp innovator, the cutting edge in artistic interpretation and technique versus the mercurial stormy personality riding the sharp wave of belligerence and tormented restlessness.

and when i reach port…

The Project

Anxious departures conceived in a paroxysm of febrile thought. The sleepless waves bear the boat of the Initiate to the cult of chance as the furtive thought throbs with expectation. Art stretches language to its limits and creates new possibilities even peripheral ones. The clandestine thought, like the ever shifting paper boat provides a means of fragile escape from stagnation, repression… breaking the shackles of imprisoning logical thought and going beyond that to create and transform possibilities.

This project was conceived against a backdrop of a stream of boats carrying desperate individuals in search of a better life. The Mediterranean, proves an incongruent form, a barrier, a frontier but also a bridge and a means of escape. The discourse created within this sphere by the clandestine economic refugee Diaspora, mirrors the incongruity: ‘stem the alien flow/ give them safe passage’. In migration, individuals stratified in despair engage lines of flight with fragile boats to seek new possibilities, so too does art provide a means of escape from petrification and inaction by demolishing old boundaries and consequently energising the creative force. The paper boats are nomadic wanderers in a sea of thought attempting a furtive escape. Once realised, the escape bears promise to a multitude of interactions and transformations.

and when i reach port…

The installation was housed in the circular atrium at St James Cavalier, Centre for Creativity, Valletta Malta. It consisted of an 8m diameter basin filled with water on which paper boats are set afloat. Visitors are encouraged to interact by marking paper with thoughts, then folding it into a paper boat and setting it free on a line of flight.

The reflective Self changes in space and time weaving a Narrative Identity. There is nothing stagnant about the Self. The person tells a story, is the subject of the story, becomes the reader and writer of his or her own life, intrinsically the interpreter, the interpreted and the recipient of those interpretations. All this occurring within fragile space and decaying time. The perishable temporal space.

The paradoxical wall, seemingly uniform in texture and colour, is shattered by different drawers and different reflections as pockets of perishable temporal spaces occupied by the Self.

Deposited Reflections Installation Malta at War Museum, Birgu Wartime shelters May 2005

Food for Thought Installation 4 recycled refrigirators, many books, viewer participation City Gate, Valletta May 2005

Horizontical Performance Upper Barrakka, Valletta February 2006

s, m, l Installation Fort St Angelo, Birgu June 2006

vertigo Installation 20 life size mannequins, 4 cars, paint, wire rope MFCC, Malta October 2006

Petite mort Photographic prints November 2006

MEWGA (wave in Maltese) This work explores the kinship reflected in the Semitic linguistic heritage of two southern Mediterranean neighbours.

The rich honeyed tones of language are the convergent point between cultures although they maintain quintessential uniqueness. The sound wave, through Language transforms the space into a common ground, which is soothing like honey, doing away with points of divergence.

The Installation The viewer is presented with a wave-like walk-through made up of 128 suspended speakers. This miniature but elaborate public address system is divided into two audio channels.

On one, Maltese poetry is recited, while on the other channel the Tunisian Arabic equivalent of the same poem is heard simultaneously, thus a play with sound is created. Some Maltese words of Semitic origin coincide with their Arabic counterparts, while others do not. These similarities are the bridges that tie together countries in the Mediterranean with strong past and present cultural links.

Midway, a copy of Il-Miklem Malti, an etymological dictionary in Maltese, is half submerged in honey. Its pages opened on the word ghasel (honey), itself of Semitic root. In Maltese we use the term fommu bil-ghasel (his honeyed mouth) a direct reference to the sweetness of the language. Honey always carried deep mysterious meanings and was referred to in most ancient writings as a sacred and healing substance.

This project was supported by Malta Council for Culture and the Arts Sign-it Ltd FloatGlass Ltd The Sound System Special thanks to Michael Aquilina, Francesca Balzan, Ruben Caruana, Godwin Caruana, Denis Vella, Elton Muscat, Graziella Tanti, Georgina Portelli, Katrina Portelli, Martina Portelli, Robert Longo, Jon Vella, Dr Adrian Grima, Dr Martin Zammit, Simone Inguanez, Marcelle Teuma, Walid Nabhan,

MEWGA 128, 50mm Cone Speakers 500m Speaker Flex 2, 4.2m Aluminium pipes 1CD Player, 1 Amplifier ‘Samsara’ Poem by Simone Inguanez Book in Honey Glass box January 2007

Thinking chair Chair, scribbles, Katrina’s doodles and notes collected over a period of 5 years Fragments from the studio, curated by Mark Mangion April 2007 Photos by Chris Sant Fournier and Mark Mangion

Curators Notes on Chroma Chroma will attempt to addressColour in a heightened light.

It will search for challenging new questions on how colour is used in Art today. It will deal with the synthetic and the natural, light and dark and new representations of how colour appears within the framework of the image and object. It will attempt to push the boundaries of what colour is across all media Chroma was curated by Mark Mangion May 2007.

Performance at Chroma Eggs, food colour, bread, stove, toaster, frying pan,oil, syringes May 2007 Photos by Chris Sant Fournier

Bad Biscuits Project based on the issue of domestic violence in a dysfunctional family.

The simple biscuit accompaning many a comforting cup of tea in a loving family home, is rebranded with words of hate and abuse. The wholesome comforting biscuit becomes an unsavoury testimony of verbal violence.

Cooked dough on wire mesh January 2007

Made in Malta Domestic broom, wood August 2007

FEEL 204 Domestic brooms, wood August 2007

Art fur Synthetic fur on board, shaver November 2007

video works

ILMA 3min video-loop On immersion into the murky fluidity of memory, the self induced apnoea initiates the searching shift for sites of memory, which may be contested or retained. The embryonic sites of memory, become a fluid stream of personal and collective experience. A ritual narrative organised within a circumscribed space.

ILMA Maltese word for ‘water’

THE OTHERSIDE 3min video-loop with audio Set in a cemetry The Otherside creates a dialogue between what is real and incorporeal, shadow and reflection. Life and death, the perishable and imperishable.

This work explores the spiritual raison d’etre behind the decision of devotees to carry the statues representing tableaux from our Lord’s redemptive passion on Good Friday. Of particular interest are the bearers of those statues that even in today’s increasingly secular society attract the greatest devotion such as ‘Christ the Redeemer’, the ‘Crucifixion’ and ‘Our Lady of Sorrows’. The work visually explores the dialectic between spiritual devotion and self-mortification .The devotee is reconciled with his choice as a penitent accompanied by the rasping clicking sounds of the wooden shaft used to carry the effigy reminiscent of the ‘cuqlajta’ . He is not very intent on exhibiting the machismo associated with carrying the effigy of the village saint. The devotee, as bearer submits to physical pain analogous to Christ’s suffering. He articulates this narrative, by bearing a heavy statue on his shoulders with the public, testimony, to his penance and physical mortification. He may even be left with a physical reminder of his penance in the shape of his disfigured shoulder.

KIF INT MRAZZAN? 3min video-loop with audio

Born 1961 Works mainly in Installation art.

Studied at Swindon School of Art & Design, UK Book Designer Set Designer for TV productions in Malta Visiting lecturer – Faculty of Education, University of Malta Select shows abroad 1998 - Breadworks - Central Connecticut State University USA 2004 - Carosello Maltese – Magazzini del Sale, Cervia, Italy 2005 - Oltrepassando l’arte dei paesi – Piccoli Stati su in-certi stereotipi - Republic of San Marino 2005 - Agricola de Cologne – Video Channel, Cologne Germany 2006 - SPILL 2 – Citric Gallery, Brescia, Italy 2007 - Malta Hanina, Musee de la ville de Tunis, Palais Kheïrredine, Tunisia 2007 - Crossings – Pierides Museum of Contemporary Art, Nicosia Cyprus 2007 - 6collabor8 – Palais Liechtenstein, Feldkirch, Austria 2007 - 6collabor8 – The Citadel, Gozo Select works Malta 1999 - What was ...is - St John’s Co-Cathedral, Valletta, Malta 1999 - ism - National Museum of Fine Arts - Malta 2002 - 4 Ply below zero - An ice installation - St James Cavalier, Centre for Creativity, Malta 2004 - Paradox on a knife edge - Installation, Caraffa Stores, Vittoriosa, Malta 2004 - and when I reach port… - Installation, St James Cavalier, Centre for Creativity, Malta 2005 - ILMA – 3min video loop 2005 - The Other Side – 3min Video loop and audio 2006 - Food for Thought – Site specific Installation, City Gate, Valletta, Malta 2006 - Vertigo – 15m high Installation at The Malta Fairs and Conventions Centre, Malta 2007 - “Kif int mrazzan?” – 3m video loop with audio, Oratory of the Church of St Francis, Valletta 2007 - 3 writers and a reflection – Short art film for Sealines Project 2007 - GUT FEELING – Short art film featuring Welsh Author Robert Minhinnick, Sealines Project

Select collective exhibitions 1999 - Reinterpreting Preti - National Museum of Fine Arts, Malta 2000 - Art in Malta Today, St James Cavalier, Centre for Creativity, Valletta Malta 2002 - ÜBER - Portomaso, Malta curated by Mark Mangion 2002 - CITYSPACES, Valletta Malta 2003 - BORDERS, Pinto Vaults, Pinto Wharf, Valletta Malta 2004 - ESCAPE – The Prisons, Cittadella, Gozo curated by Austin Camilleri 2005 - BLITZ - Couvre Porte War-time Shelters, Vittoriosa 2006 - CROSSINGS – A contemporary view – Fort St Angelo, Malta 2007 - ARTIFECTURE – START Project curated by Vince Briffa 2007 - The search for a space – (www.thesearchforaspace.com), Malta 2007 - The Philosophical Brothel – St James Cavalier, Centre for Creativity curated by Raphael Vella Collaborations 1998 – Pierre Portelli by Marta V. Kot, collaboration with American Artist Marta V. Kot, New York 1999 - A Happening - Collaboration with Austin Camilleri, Valletta and The Citadel Gozo 2002 - Ropport - an ongoing collaboration with American artist Ann Ropp Collaborated with Lovedifference and artist Michaelangelo Pistoletto at the 50th Venice Biennale 2006 - The Agamemnon Project - An interactive installation in collaboration with Theatre Anon MITP Theatre, Valletta, Malta 2006 – Le Petit Mort – Installation and video - Collaboration with Straw Hat Cowboy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWXh3iyTBo4 Awards 1994 Teachers Whisky Art Competition 1995 Malta Music Awards Best CD Sleeve Shortlisted for 1999 Venice Biennale

Studio • 1, Alley 10 Main Street Zebbug, Malta • Tel: (+356) 21 463 098 • email: post@pierreportelli.com www.pierreportelli.com

Select Bibliography R. Vella, “Images of Woman”, Review, Gallarija, The Malta Independent, Standard Publications, 22 Oct. 1995 p.4 R. Vella, Merciless Maltafest, Review, Gallarija, The Malta Independent, Standard Publications, 28 July 1996 p.4 A. Stivala, “Wirjiet ghas-Sajf”, Review, Il-Hadd Magazine, It-Torca, Union Print, Malta, 4 August 1996 p.23 R. Vella, “Yawn... another Maltafest collective”, Review, Gallarija, The Malta Independent, Standard Publications, Malta, 13 July 1997, p.2 “Il-Wirja tas-Sena”, Review, Il-Hadd Magazine, It-Torca, Union Print, 27 July 1997, p.22 E.V. Borg, “Expressive Language”, Profile, Malta this Month, Advantage Publication, July 1998 pp. 66-67.

D. Vella “Article in Breadworks Exhibition Catalogue”, Central Connecticut State University, USA July 1998 pp. 5-7 R. Vella, “Food for Thought”, Review, Gallarija, The Malta Independent, Standard Publications, Malta, 4 October 1998 p.8 A. Bartolo, “Art-turned-Culinary in Breadworks, Review, The Sunday Times, Allied Newspapers, Malta, 18 October 1998 p.34 Article on Mirrors Installation at St John Co Cathedral, The Times, Allied Newspapers, Malta, January 6 1999, p.4 F. Galea Debono, “Reinterpreting Preti” Exhibition at Fine Arts Museum, The Times, Allied Newspapers, Malta, 8 January 1999 p.16 E. Fiorentino, “Some Wayward Ways of Reinterpreting”, Review, The Sunday Times, Allied Newspapers, Malta, 17 January 1999, p.24 N. Ellul Vincenti, “Live Talking Points - Has Art gone Stale?”, Online Comment, http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking_point/newsid_259000/, January 1999 R. Vella, “Reinterpreting Preti”, Article, Gallarija, The Malta Independent, Standard Publications, Malta 24 January 1999 R. Vella, “What’s Happening to Maltese Art?”, Review, Gallarija, The Malta Independent, Standard Publications, Malta, 14 March 1999 p.7 R. Vella, “Joking about Art”, Review, Gallarija, The Malta Independent, Standard Publications, Malta, 23 May 1999, p.6 K. Wein, “ism”, Article, ism Exhibition Brochure, Malta, May 1999 J.P. Cassar, “Art and People Reconciliation”, The Times, Allied Newspapers, Malta, 25 May 1999, p.15 E. Fiorentino, “The hit or miss of an ism”, Review, The Sunday Times, Allied Newspapers, Malta, 30 May 1999, p.24 A. Bartolo, “Pain, Death, Art”, Article, A Happening Booklet, Pierre Portelli, Austin Camilleri, Malta, September 1999 pp7-13 G. Glanville, “L-Arti fl-Apert - Iljieli Mediterranji”, Review, Ghalik Magazin, L-Orizzont, Union Print, Malta, 12 August 2000 p.10 J.P. Cassar, “Art in Malta Today”, Article, The Sunday Times, Allied Newspapers, Malta, 17 September 2000 p.21 V. Macdonald, “Centre for Creativity at St James Cavalier opens today”, Article, The Times, Allied Newspapers, Malta, 22 September 2000 p.4 M. Benoit, “My Week”, Gallarija, The Malta Independent, Standard Publications, Malta, 1 October 2000 p.3 G. Glanville, “Art in Malta Today”, Review, Ghalik Magazine, L-Orizzont, Union Print, Malta, 7 October 2000 p.10 E. Fiorentino, “A Mirror for Maltese Art”, Review, The Sunday Times, Allied Newspapers, Malta, 8 October 2000, p.19