Groundwaters
Outsider perspectives and visions of elsewhere
Anonymous, Emma Attard, Adrian Camilleri, William Driscoll, Emma Johnson, Salvina Muscat, Joe Vassallo
Valletta Contemporary, 30 September - 12 November 2022
The label of ‘outsider artist’ has come to function as an umbrella term for individuals producing work outside the culturally (artificially) established centres of psychological or social normality. Outsider art is characterised by an almost total stylistic freedom and lack of concern for art historical norms. GROUNDWATERS brings together a collection of artworks and objects that evade categorisation in order to explore outsider art in Malta, as well as the stories of pain, hope, survival and strength that they contain. The exhibition is the first of its kind in Malta.
Anonymous (undated) Untitled, coloured crayons and pencil on found paper
The search for raw art, untouched by the corrupting effects of culture, led the artist and art historian Jean Debuffet to collect, under the heading ‘art brut’, work made by artists who were living and functioning outside the established centres of cultural and psychological normality. GROUNDWATERS brings together a collection of artworks and objects that evade categorisation in order to explore outsider art here in Malta. The exhibition looks into the works’ unique aesthetic logic as well as the stories of pain, hope, survival, and strength contained within them.
Charles Russell’s words are instructive:
“[W]e sense that we are encountering individuals who may be very much like us but who also seem to exist in another dimension of our world, suggesting degrees of intensity or estrangement that may be at once fascinating, desirable, and frightening … the mystery of otherness and its closeness loom[s] forth even more strongly in the encounter with the work of outsider artists, whose inner journeys pull us deep into themselves and into ourselves.” (Charles Rusell, Groundwaters. Munich: Prestel, 2011, 20.)
The common theme uniting the artworks in GROUNDWATERS is that their creation stems from a deeply felt need which is unselfconscious and rooted in necessity and raw experience. Whether this need is therapeutic, expressive, meditative, or magical, it is not artistic in the conventional sense and veers towards using aesthetic practice as a transformative ritual.
Other objects included in the exhibition, such as African fetish dolls, ex-voto offerings, and the alchemical philosopher’s stone, function in the same ritualistic way and have been introduced into the exhibition complex to provide a touchstone narrative of transformation around which the other artworks gather, each adding or taking according to its specific valence.
The exhibition is the first in Malta to explore outsider perspectives. GROUNDWATERS takes its name from Charles Russell’s 2011 publication and seeks to extend Russell’s research into new contexts.
GROUNDWATERS includes a catalogue essay by Charles Russell.
Curation and text Gabriel Zammit; Catalogue essay Charles Russell; Project management Gabriel Zammit; Graphic design Siobhan Vassallo; Sound Adrian Camilleri; Lenders John Paul Azzopardi, Adrian Camilleri, Sasha Najeong Farrugia, Monsignor Louis Suban and Twanny Muscat on behalf of Il-Madonna tal-Ħerba Sanctuary, Birkirkara; Special thanks Anna Calleja, Michael and Maria Zammit, Adrian Mamo, Norbert Francis Attard, the Valletta Contemporary team, Gabriel Farrugia, Adrian Camilleri, Lara Zammit, Raymond and Marianne from Gemelli Framing
Funded by Arts Council Malta Project Support Scheme
Press and content Valletta Contemporary Curator Interview: Gabriel Zammit; ‘Groundwaters' of outsider art and the collective subconscious; Groundwaters - an exhibition of outsider art at Valletta Contemporary; Groundwaters: Collective Exhibition Exploring Outsider Art, Pain And Hope Launched At Valletta; NEW EXHIBITION OPENING THIS WEEK AT VALLETTA CONTEMPORARY; SPOTLIGHT Gabriel Zammit discusses outsider art; GROUNDWATERS: outsider perspectives and visions of elsewhere; A closer insight into Ground Waters collective curated by Gabriel Zammit; Groundwaters MaltArti Feature on Television Malta