between earth and sky

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Norbert Francis Attard Between Earth and Sky

THE BEGINNING

As God pondered on the design of the universe

He posed Himself this question

should the beginning be in numbers or should it be in words?

RICHARD ENGLAND

KAMIYAMA ARTIST IN RESIDENCE KAMIYAMA, TOKUSHIMA PREFECTURE, JAPAN, 2004.

Drawbridges of Symmetry

across

past and present

time and space

earth and sky

where

today mirrors yesterday

in

parallel harmonies

between

remembrance and desire

pairing

wisdom and knowledge

merging

the not yet with the no longer.

Mathematical Frameworks

numbers and ciphers

allegories and metaphors

from

stone age to our age

anachronistic mutations

interminable recurrences

synchronic resonances.

Immeasurable Sparticles

returns and departures

spiralling in the endless hourglass of echoed time.

RICHARD ENGLAND

DRAWBRIDGES BETWEEN THE ISLE OF THE MIDDLE SEA AND THE LAND OF THE CHERRY BLOSSOM

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004 NORBERT FRANCIS ATTARD IN KAMIYAMA

FOREWORD BY AOMI OKABE

007 DRAWBRIDGES: NORBERT FRANCIS ATTARD IN JAPAN

CRITICAL ESSAY BY RICHARD ENGLAND

INSTALLATION WORKS

039 ±1.618034

049 BLUESTONE RIVER

054 EARTH GALAXY

059 GOLDEN SUDACHI

069 FOOD CYCLE

076 EARTH MOTHER

083 DOUBLE SPIRAL

093 SACRED GEOMETRY

PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKS

099 SPARTICLES SERIES

110 ARTIST’S DIARY BY NORBERT FRANCIS ATTARD

ABOUT THE ARTIST

115 BIOGRAPHY, EXHIBITIONS, BIBLIOGRAPHY

123 SELECTED CHRONOLOGY OF WORKS

156 ARTIST’S STATEMENT

157 SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF CONTRIBUTORS

158 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CONTENTS

SUNSET OVER MISQA TANK MNAJDRA TEMPLES, MALTA, TEMPLE PERIOD.

4ORA PRO NOBIS CATHEDRAL MUSEUM, MDINA, MALTA, 2000.

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NORBERT FRANCIS ATTARD IN KAMIYAMA FOREWORD BY AOMI OKABE

CYCLE 8TH HAVANA BIENNIAL, HAVANA, CUBA, 2003.

I first met Norbert Francis Attard at the exhibition of the 8th Havana Biennale 2003 in Cuba. His vivid and intense work in Havana consisted of a huge

photograph of a blindfolded female nude hung in an up-side-down position meant to represent a crucifixion. The mirrored image together with a pair

of artificial legs floating on the water-surface, created an entire body in the shape of an X. This impressive installation revealed a strong Christian

iconography, whilst simultaneously exploring the meaning of blasphemy. I next met Norbert in Kamiyama, Japan. He had been invited to participate

in the ‘Kamiyama Artist in Residence’ for which he created a number of works in collaboration with the community. Since ancient times, the symbol of

the spiral form has existed in both Maltese and Japanese cultures - this symbol, of a continual form of energy, generated from nature and the universe

is used throughout the eight works which Attard produced in Japan. The strong qualities of symbols together with a deep fascination for ancient his-

tory and mathematical principles lie at the root of Attard’s work. These works have been collectively entitled Between Earth and Sky. The image of

the mother goddess is also part of Japanese mythology. Perhaps Attard’s long and vivid interest in Japanese culture is due partly to the existence of

this symbol in both Eastern and Western civilizations. Through his art, Attard seeks the salvation or survival of ancient human and world knowledge

- a knowledge which our ancestors possessed, yet one may have been somewhat forgotten with time. Indigenous materials such as a-oshi bluestone

and sudachi (limes), together with ready-found objects like the Japanese slipper, are the basic materials for some of Attard’s work. These qualities

are what makes all of Attard’s works so highly site-specific. His most impressive work Double Spiral reminds me of a video installation which Attard

created for the ’3rd Christian Art Biennale’ in Malta, in 2000. In Ora Pro Nobis, he spread two thousand shoes over the floor of the exhibition space.

Miraculously, in little more than a month Attard realized eight significant art works, including installations, projected images and related events. This

accomplishment was made possible through the artist’s zeal and ability but also thanks to the versatility and enthusiastic collaboration of the local

people of Kamiyama. We can sense a feeling of love and deep respect for history, which is the underlying theme in the art of Attard. The works tell a

fresh, modest story brought up in a rich harvest of nature and cultivated by the love for the people of Kamiyama.

6THE NARUTO WHIRLPOOL NARUTO STRAIT, JAPAN.

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CRITICAL ESSAY BY RICHARD ENGLAND DRAWBRIDGES: NORBERT FRANCIS ATTARD IN JAPAN

THE ARTIST IN PROGRESS

THE COGNATIVE FOUNTAINHEADS

THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN

THE ISLE OF THE MIDDLE SEA

THE MATHEMATICAL LEXICON

THE ART WORKS

SPARTICLES

CONCLUSION

DANIEL CILIA PHOTOGRAPHY OF PREHISTORIC TEMPLES & ARTEFACTS

The Artist in Progress

The Japanese leave nothing to chance ... every tree, flower, pebble, blade of glass has its artistically proper place. The same is true of my art.

Norbert Francis Attard

Way back in 1979 I was invited by Norbert Francis Attard to write an introduction to the catalogue of one of his first exhibitions. As a

young artist, Attard had already caught my attention with his high quality production of immaculately made prints (1977-81) depicting

mythical towns and fabled cities. These were inspired by Malta’s cube-townscape forms and also influenced by the chimerical

depictions and renderings of such artists as Folon and Escher. Almost prophetically, I had entitled my introduction, “The Graphics

of Feng Shui”, because of the spiral graphics employed by Attard to depict the surrounding areas of his castle-like structures.

What had notably struck me in this particular series by this fledgling artist-architect, was the stark contrast, a form of tension of the

opposites, between the architectural dominance of the built-form of the walled citadels and the sinuous labyrinthine earth force-lines

of their setting. These earthbound, meandering, serpentine forms, read to me, as metaphors for the Ch’i dragon forces of the earth,

as understood in the geomantic Oriental science of Feng Shui.

MALTA GRAND HARBOUR VIEW OF FORT ST. ANGELO, SENGLEA

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ONLY ONE MAN OFFSET LITHOGRAPH,1978. QUARRY WALLS OFFSET LITHOGRAPH,1979.

The Medusa-like tresses of the telluric surroundings of Attard’s urban cities sinuously merged into the geometry of his meticulously

delineated ordered structures; which in turn rose and melted into celestial helix skies, also rendered in coiling convoluted spiral

patterns. It was already obvious, that even in these early days, the artist was already haunted and captivated by the relationships

of a man-made order to the rhythms and forces of nature. The artist’s Japan works featured and discussed in this publication, may

therefore be read as a culmination of the artist’s long standing interest in these equations. The Kamiyama installations are a concrete

manifestation of Attard’s consistency in his growth and development as an artist; with many of the motifs found in these early works

appearing again, in more complex format.

MANDALA I SILKSCREEN PRINT,1987.

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MIHRAB I OFFSET LITHOGRAPHS,1982. KOSODE II SILKSCREEN PRINT,1985.

Attard followed this architecturally oriented collection with a series of graphics which focused on the more rigid geometric forms of the Muslim

MIHRAB; the devotional focal point of the congregation in mosque buildings all over the world. In this series (1982-84), for the first time,

he involved himself in a search for harmonic and spiritual acquiescence, through the discipline and rigour of the contemplative precision of

geometry and its ordered forms. His next important exhibition journeyed him to the Far East and provided him with an initial encounter with

the ‘kimono’ mind of Japan. Again, this print series was to prove somewhat prophetic, in terms of providing for the artist a thematic stepping

stone to the 2004 ‘artist in residence’ work-pieces in Kamiyama. In these visual ‘kimono’ essays (1985-86) Attard comes under the influence

of the Orient and its religious beliefs of Zen Buddhism and Shinto. The designs of these Japanese vestments are delicately depicted,

while also hinting at both the hidden symbolic overlays of the intricate patterns themselves and also the more complex ramifications of the

whole thinking process of the Oriental mind. Worn by the Geisha, the kimono, introduced to Japan over 1200 years ago, combines both

artistic achievement and allurement. A garment, that fuses elegance with discomfort, it is a perfect example of the Japanese capability of

equating and combining the dichotomy of opposites. From the ebullient graphics of the kimono, Attard then passed to even more elaborate

depictions; the symmetrical diagrams of the cosmological order of the Mandala (1987). With its multifarious symbolism of the universe,

mandalic geometry is the most balanced and perfectly proportioned example of representation of symbolic order. In this series of graphic

prints of these sacred cosmic geographies, the artist ventured for the first time into the exploration of the relationships and equations of

mathematics, symmetry and their resultant harmony of form.

SOLSTICE WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER,1989.

MEASURE OF THE EARTH ACRYLIC ON CANVAS,1995.

By 1995 Attard had initiated his departure from figurative art and ventured into the world of abstraction. His 1996 exhibition at the Foundation

for International Studies in Malta’s capital city, Valletta, featured his crossing over the threshold to a more organic and abstract lexicon. Although

freer than his previous print series, the works exhibited were still bound and held together by a disciplined geometric overlay. The titles of

many of these paintings, now in much larger format, were again to provide clues as to where the artist was eventually to go. His titles, Sacred

Geometry, Listening to Nature, Division of Unity, Solstice, and Measure of the Earth are clear indications of Attard’s increasing interest, not only

in the forces of nature, but more so in the underlying order of their geometry and propagation. Post the blurred opacity of a first glance, on

closer examination, the paintings also revealed references to Malta’s mysterious Neolithic culture and its sophisticated art forms. Peter Serracino

Inglott, in his catalogue introduction to this collection, referred to the Hypogeum-like imagery of the works. Immediately post this exhibition, Attard

passed from print-maker and painter to installation artist. Now no longer practising as an architect, this stepping over to a new realm of creation

involved him passing from the confines of the limited spaces of museums and galleries to the wider arenas of workplace and site.

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As an interventionist, he now became both maker and creator of an inter-cultural art form. In this new field, the relationship of the artist

to the workplace of the art-piece itself, became a paramount factor. No longer carrying his work with him, Attard now dialogued directly

with the geography, geology, history and memory of place, while also participating with the community of the specific country or area

in which he was working. His works became essentially site-specific and the meaning of the phrase “spirit of place” was extended to

have broader and deeper meanings. Attard, here, metamorphoses himself into a quintessential map-maker, establishing longitude and

latitude equations between remembrance and desire, yet time-framed to the mystical co-ordinates of the not yet and the no longer. Now

an installation artist, Attard transforms his audience from spectators to participants. The artist has turned mediator, engaging with society

through direct interactive and dialogical participation. Attard is no longer object maker, but service provider.

From this body of work, worthy of particular notice are the artist’s creations of Beyond Conflict set up at the Biennial of Liverpool in 2002,

where he wrapped red and green fabric round the city’s oratory building; the explosive orgasm of colours which revitalised the dilapidated

Manningham Mills in Bradford in 2003 and the run-down pier in Margate in 2007; the Palestrina and Hell intervention at the Johanniterkirche

Feldkrich in Austria; and the haunting mirrored water installation of Salina’s Lament at the Borders exhibition at the rehabilitated Pinto Wharf

Stores, in Valletta, Malta, also dating from 2003, for which I contributed to the catalogue text.

PALESTRINA AND HELL FELDKIRCH, AUSTRIA, 2003.

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BEYOND CONFLICT LIVERPOOL, UK, 2002. TURN. TO COLOUR MARGATE, UK, 2007.

The following year, with a now established international reputation, Norbert Attard was invited as artist in residence, for a six-week period, to

Kamiyama, on the Shikoku island of Japan. During his stay there, the artist combined transported memories of his own ethnic roots and his long-

standing fascination with geometry and proportion, to merge them with his personal reading of the spirit of place and ethnic customs of Japan. All

this generative material combined to produce a series of highly imaginative and original installation works, which involved cultural interchanges

and amalgamations in a manifestation of a contemporary “global village” art-form, which at the same time read as specifically regional and local.

The Kamiyama ‘artist in residence’ programme invites artists to create works of art, which, while reflecting the Zeitgeist of today are also specifically

conceived in relationship to nature and more so to the particular local genius loci. During his stay in this province of Tokushima, Attard constructed

intellectual drawbridges between the ancient cults of his isle of the Middle Sea and the still dominant love of nature of the land of the cherry blossom,

in interventions which spanned and connected this shared common theme across millennia, from Stone to Internet Age, in installations at the same

time conceived as equations to dissolve cultural barriers while constructing interchangeable space-time hyperlinks.

When, on arrival in Kamiyama, Attard discovered that two of the national holidays of Japan were the spring and autumn equinoxes, he immediately

constructed a mental equation with the Malta Mnajdra Neolithic stone calendar complex and marker of these two paramount seasonal dates.

Separated by thousands of kilometres in space and over five millennia in time, the cultures of Japan and Malta, share across space and time a

common adhesion to, and respect of, the rules and rhythms of nature. These civilisations, though different and apart, both based their life patterns

on these rhythms, which, in turn, are governed by the harmony and order of number. Nature’s progress, change and growth patterns all seem

to be structured and ordered by a particular mathematical and geometrical overlay. Attard, in his Japan body of works, relies essentially on the

mysticism and order of number, as the generative structuring grammar and underlying syntax for the core lexicon of his artistic creations.

INTERVENTION I BRADFORD, UK. 2003.

JAPAN MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPE OF KAMIYAMA

MALTA LANDSCAPE AROUND GHARB, GOZO.

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The Cognitive Fountainheads

The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else.

Barry Commoner

At this stage, before dealing with the mathematical syntax of knowledge of how all things are ordered through the overlying grammar

of mathematics, it is worth examining the two spatial or place depositaries, from which Attard draws his inspiration for these latest of

his creative interactions, Japan, as the location he is visiting and working in, and the Maltese archipelago as the formative cultural

identity environment of the artist. Both these locations, together with their collective memory, act as the springboards for the artist’s

poetic creations, conceived as cross-cultural and time-bridging equations, bringing together the peoples of two countries,

through their common understanding of the overriding rules and laws of the forces of nature.

MALTA SALTPANS, MARSALFORN, GOZO. JAPAN MOUNT FUJI, NEAR TOKYO.

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The Land of the Rising Sun

In Japan nature has not altogether lost its paradisiacal loveliness.

Bernard Rudofsky

Perhaps the most apt definition of the enigmatic land of contrasts that is Japan is that provided in the title of Ruth Benedict’s book “The

Chrysanthemum and the Sword”. Commissioned in the early forties, the author, a cultural anthropologist, was assigned the task of preparing a

study of this country in order to help the United States of America during that delicate period, to answer a multitude of questions relating to this

land and its inscrutable people. Japan, to this day, remains to the western mind, essentially a country of divergent contrasts and ambiguities.

To the West, the complex dualities of the Orient tend to read as apparent contradictions. The Yin-Yang dyad provides perhaps the best

metaphor for outsiders to understand how the Japanese are able to combine elements that may well appear to others as dichotomies. Derived

from ancient Taoist philosophies, the Yin-Yang composite circle is the Oriental symbol for symmetry and symbiosis. Yin, is read as the passive,

earth-focused female principle and Yang as the active heaven-oriented male one. Following this equilibrated principle of duality, the people of

Japan are able to combine and blend such delicate expressions as moon-viewing and insect-listening with the forceful cults of the Martial arts

and Sumo wrestling, thus creating cross-over connections between nature’s amiable aesthetics and militant rigour.

Japan, in many respects, may be considered the Oriental counterpart of Ancient Greece, with its combination and co-existence of the antithetical

divinities of Apollo and Dionysus. The Japanese milieu is a world of heraldic animals, double-edged swords and colourful kites. Here rocks

have one hundred and thirty-eight names and each is meaningful in terms of its corresponding void. It is therefore not surprising that every

gesture of each inhabitant is a studied portrait of elegancy and precision, that paper through Origami is precisely folded into poetry, in a land

that may be considered the very quintessence of austerity. To this day, newspapers still carry items of news on the forthcoming efflorescence

of the “Sakura” cherry blossom. In spring, the air is satiated with the pink misty clouds of this flower’s falling petals, offering a perfect example

of nature’s springtime opulence. The Samurai in typical adherence to the Oriental mind-frame adopted the cherry as their metaphor for death in

combat ... to scatter in the wind while still in one’s prime.

JAPAN BRIDE DURING WEDDING CEREMONY

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While the Western world regards man as the focus of all things, the Far Eastern holistic ideal focuses on man belonging to and being but a part of

the whole continuum of nature. The Japanese believe it is nature and not man that does the creating. Both the religion of Zen and the indigenous

Shinto, point to man being inseparable from his environment and the heart of nature. Zen, from the Chinese Ch’an meaning meditation, is an austere

path to enlightenment; a world of conundrums and paradoxes, which cannot be reduced or equated to any verbal formulae. Its main object remains

that of infusing the temporal with the infinite in a creed which teaches that nothingness is the totality through which one attains enlightenment.

Shinto, which means “the way of the gods”, was, on the other hand, developed in Japan. It has no moral teaching and its belief is that divinity

manifests itself in all forms of nature. The focus is specifically on nature, together with the veneration of the sun goddess Amaterasu. Its thinking

may perhaps be defined as a process which circles its target in contrast to the more linear Western thought processes. Shinto may, therefore, be

understood to be an animistic and pantheistic relationship with nature; a creed which believes in regeneration, fertility and ritual purity. It developed

from the needs of the country’s dominant agrarian society, focused on rice farming. So important was the produce of the earth, that up to the end

of the 19th century, Japan still adopted the Lunar Calendar, which was more attuned and suitable to the country’s agriculturally focused society. As

such, the Japanese New Year, Risshun started in spring as opposed to the Gregorian Calendar’s first day of January. From these earth-oriented

Japanese attitudes, Norbert Francis Attard draws his equational relationships between Japan and Malta’s Neolithic farming people. The Japanese

have always believed that their gods and spirits are embedded in the earth, in the forms and shapes of the landscape itself. To this day, Japan is a

land still obsessed with the myths and legends of earth gods and goddesses and it is through this parallel that Attard constructs his drawbridges

linking the creeds of the land of the rising sun to his native island’s Neolithic culture and its own earth-focused beliefs. In Japan, all is still governed

by sets of meticulous rules applied as an overlay to an ordered and disciplined hierarchy. The still practised Japanese arts of Ikebana, Bonsai,

Landscape Gardening and the Tea Ceremony, all demonstrate a complex lexicon typical of the country’s intricate multi-dimensional culture. The specific

JAPAN SHINJUKU DISTRICT BY NIGHT, TOKYO JAPAN CONTEMPORARY BUILDING, OSAKA

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qualities of wabi, essentially the quality of sparsity and severity, together with that of sabi, interpreted as a sense of melancholy, are qualities which one

constantly encounters in many of these exquisite arts and perhaps even more so in the design and layout of the traditional Japanese garden. In these

arenas of contemplative mysticism, through man’s mutation of nature, a deep elegiac meditative Tatazumai is established. Ultimately, the serenity of the

relationship between man and nature in these arenas, may be read as the cosmicisation of nature, which in the process transfigures into a consecration.

Space in these Zen gardens is qualitatively different. Mirroring the sparingness and in-depth meanings of the minimalistic poetry of the Zen koan and

the traditional Haiku, the Japanese gardener through their his selective Sentei sparsity together with his overall understanding of nature, is able to equate

and link the temporal with the timeless. These are spaces sensed not only through reason but more so through one’s senses and emotions. It is the

combination of this land’s structured society; its particular indigenous spirit of place and traditional culture and the artist’s own architecturally-ground

passion for order, discipline and proportion, together with the collective memory of his own homeland, that serves Attard in his production of these

fascinating and intriguing “Between Earth and Sky” works.

In Japan, all is still governed by sets of meticulous rules applied as an overlay to an ordered and disciplined hierarchy. The still practised Japanese

arts of Ikebana, Bonsai, Landscape Gardening and the Tea Ceremony, all demonstrate a complex lexicon typical of the country’s intricate multi-

JAPAN GOLDEN PAVILION, KYOTO

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The Isle of the Middle Sea

The people of this clairvoyant islein allegiance to their land

cast amalgams human and divinemetaphysical symbols of unity

umbilical dyads of fertility and sterilitywhere death meets birth in an eternal cycle of return

Richard England

The Maltese Islands, at the crossroads of the history-laden Middle Sea, boast the most important of all architectural Neolithic remains of pre-history.

Pre-dating the major ancient world monuments of the Middle East, Egypt, Crete and the standing stones of Northern Europe, the most imposing of

the Maltese temple structures date from around 3500 to 2500 BC. This was an era when man was changing from hunter to farmer and consequently

settler. Through the discovery of agriculture and the human habit change from roamer to settler, the first artificial man-made landmarks appeared

as the precursors of architecture. From these markers of territory, which now became equated to power, an architecture that reflected its builders’

understanding of both earth and sky forces and nature was developed. A society, which relied almost entirely for its existence on the produce of

the earth, soon became aware of the dependency of its agrarian product on the movement and cycles of the heavenly bodies.

Many of the Malta temples, particularly the Mnajdra complex, were planned not only as sacral structures, but also as time-clock calendars

to enable their builders to read seasonal changes in order to establish the correct time for both the planting and harvesting of crops. These

peoples’ interest, however was not limited and bonded solely to the forces of the sky but was also related to and concomitant with the reading and

understanding of earth forms, their configuration and their underlying subterranean energy forces. It was through this understanding of both sky

and earth forces, that this ancient society established precise spatial locations and alignment placings for their structures. The reading by these

people of earth’s force-lines was not dissimilar to the still existent Far Eastern geomantic practice of Feng Shui (wind-water).

AERIAL VIEW OF MNAJDRA TEMPLES, MALTA, 3600 - 2500 BC

Many believe that the layout plan form of the sacred temple buildings of Malta was based on an anthropomorphic reproduction of the Earth

goddess herself. This deity, in the belief of Neolithic man, was not only the personification of the earth and the provider of nourishment, but

also the archetypal symbol of the whole human psyche. There is little doubt that these Malta temple structures were constructed by a people

obsessed by both eschatology and the rhythmical cycles of nature, together with an inherent umbilical relationship to and understanding of

above and below energies and forces. Because of their interest in the cycles of woman, agriculture and seasons, besides those of the earth and

the heavenly bodies, these people were quick to read time in a cyclic as opposed to a linear manner. Thus the spiral was an apt symbol for them

to depict and explore, in their attempt to come to terms with, both the passage of time and also natural and human cycles.

The concept of expanding growth and perpetual regeneration must have held a particular fascination for these people. No doubt, they

would have observed the spiral and its patterns in the natural phenomena of whirlpools, whirlwinds, flowers and more so in land molluscs

and sea shells. Their interest in this labyrinthine symbol must have also provided them with a metaphor for the evolution of their own life

pattern, from origin to indefinable destination through the cycle of birth, life, death and eventual re-birth. The amorphous matriarchal

buildings of Malta’s pre-history, with their complex artifacts and symbols, together with the whole intricate spectrum of the islands’ cultural

identity, provided Norbert Attard with an inspirational launch pad to establish his imaginative links and connections with the converse

paradoxical spirit of place of ‘God’s Mountain’ in Kamiyama.

ANTHROPOMORPHIC STATUE, HAL SAFLIENI HYPOGEUM, TEMPLE PERIOD.

VIEW OF MNAJDRA TEMPLES WITH ISLAND OF FILFLA IN THE BACKGROUND, MALTA.

AERIAL VIEW OF HAGAR QIM TEMPLES, MALTA, 3600 - 2500 BC.

27 LOW RELIEF SCULPTURE, TARXIEN TEMPLES, MALTA, 3000 - 2500 BC

The terrestrial and celestial alignments of the Malta temples, together with their complex layout plan-form demonstrate not only ancient man’s

in-depth comprehension of nature and the earth, but also hint at a more sophisticated knowledge and practice of measurement, geometry

and geomancy. Through the combination of both an inherent and instinctive knowledge, combined with a far from “primitive” intellect,

Neolithic man was able to forge successful equations to be able to live in peace and harmony with not only his fellow brethren, but also with

the forces of nature. The materialistic desacralisation of our contemporary culture will never permit us today to understand the philosophies

of these ancient people; their rituals or the guiding grammar of their architecture. Their relationship to path-finding and place-making

together with their interactions between form and meaning are now irretrievable. Man today has in fact lost his memory of this knowledge of

the past. Japan, on the other hand, remains one of the few countries which still manages to achieve a consistent and healthy relationship

with nature, its environment and its produce. It is still a country where ritual is an enactment of myth and nature is understood, above all, in

terms of its animistic qualities. In Japan the understanding of geography is still given an extra dimension in terms of a spiritual and sacred

comprehension. Hence the dialectics of dualities and dichotomies, constructed by Norbert Attard in Kamiyama, become even more pertinent

and apposite contemporary manifestations; for above all, they hint at a possible way for modern man to once more re-reconcile himself with

nature, in a new and vital spiritual ecology, so essential for the survival of our species.

The Mathematical Lexicon

Art is a shadow of divine perfection.

Michelangelo

It is a well known truism that life today is almost totally controlled by number. Through number, man is constantly gauging and measuring both

material loss and gain. The idea of number being used with a sense of deeper meaning has become a far removed and distant concept for

contemporary man. Yet the rupture between the rational and mystical understanding of number is only a recent one. Up to the time of scientists

and mathematicians such as Kepler and Newton, the esoteric overlay of number was still prevalent and considered to be an essential and

inseparable property. From ancient Babylon, Egypt, through to the Greeks, and up to the time of the pioneers of the sciences and mathematics

of the Enlightenment, mysticism and number were intertwined and inseparable. Even the societies of the ancient Mediterranean and Europe

understood the spiritual meaning of number. It was Alexander Thom who confirmed that one of the earliest applications of Pi in architecture

was in the building of the ancient stone circles of northern Europe. For the later Pythagoreans everything was related to number; and they even

understood that the movements of the planets and stars were fashioned on numerical and geometrical frequencies. Around this period of the 6th

century BC, mathematics was believed to be an intellectual Mandala which helped man to focus his vision on the structure and make up of the

divine. For ancient people mysticism of number always related to the sacred; an understanding which was carried on into later Christian thought

processes. St Augustine, perhaps the greatest of the Christian thinkers and philosophers, saw in number “an image of the Creator”.

DOORWAY, GGANTIJA TEMPLES, GOZO, 3600 - 3100 BC.

It was only with the birth of modern science that mysticism and magic were removed. Yet today, as scientists probe the seemingly endless realms

of astrophysics to peer into the very origins of the universe, it seems that this overlay of magic is creeping back in. Perhaps it was science itself

that removed much of the metaphysical meaning of mathematics. Yet today the qualitative is returning, as complex new calculations are being

derived to answer challenging contemporary questions. It may therefore be said that the soul is once again creeping back into science. Einstein

himself seemed convinced of this when he stated that “mathematical theories cannot be true unless they are also beautiful”.

Norbert Francis Attard as an installation artist applies a poetic magical overlay onto his recent works by not only instilling a deep mathematical

content to his creations, but by actually using the mystical aspect of number as the generating force of his works. In his venture into the realm of

numbers, Attard lays a qualitative and a symbolic mantle to add to the depth and meaning of his work. The tools and vocabulary utilised by the artist

in this research have led him to investigate and bring into play both the mystical and magical significance of specific numbers and the fascinating

mathematical patterns which have intrigued man for millennia. The numbers and series which have particularly haunted Attard, may be listed as Pi, Phi,

the Fibonacci Series and the Spiral. Some explanatory notes on these captivating items, may not be out of place, to help the reader further appreciate

Attard’s work-approach and thought process in the making of his works.

Pi or �

Pi or � is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Its mathematical value is 3.14159 ... This endless number has both puzzled and

fascinated mathematicians ever since its discovery. It seems that its earliest use was by the ancient Egyptians. The Greeks however were also

aware of Pi through geometry, but since it could not be expressed as a whole or as an exact ratio, they did not classify it as a number. To this day,

Pi still holds a particular fascination; so much so that a film with Pi as its title was released in 1998 and only recently Givenchy marketed a men’s

cologne of that name. The whole concept of sacred geometry has constantly incorporated Pi as one of its essential elements. It may in fact be said

that sacred geometry is the magical relationship between Pi and that other captivating number Phi, also used as an even more important tool by

Attard in the working and making of his current art pieces.

THE PYRAMIDS AT GIZA, CAIRO, EYGPT, c. 2500 BC

Phi or Φ

Phi or Φ, a function of division as opposed to Pi, which is a function of the circle, remains perhaps the most fascinating number within the whole

spectrum of mathematics. Described by Johannes Kepler as “one of the two treasures of geometry” (the other being Pythagoras’ theorem), and

already referred to in the 16th century as the “Divine Proportion”, Phi is established when the ratio between the larger and smaller unit of a divided

line is equal to the ratio between the sum of the two and the larger one. In the following figure, if the ratio of AC to CB is the same as AB to AC, then

the line is said to have been divided in a “Golden Ratio” proportion. In numerical terms the exact value of Phi is that of 1.6180339887 ... while its

mathematical formula is Φ = (1 + √5)

2

This ratio which provides the most aesthetically pleasing of proportions is found constantly in botany, biology and astronomy as the consistent

form-maker and generator of the whole order of nature. The fact that Phi is neither a whole nor rational number and is also a never ending

number, has endowed it with even further mystique, intrigue and mystery. The name Phi was only given to this ratio in the last century by the

American mathematician Mark Barr, who took the first Greek letter ∞ of the name Phidias. Phidias was the great Greek sculptor (490-430 BC)

author of the sculptures of the immaculate friezes of the Parthenon on the Acropolis, which he proportioned on the Golden Ratio. The temple itself

was also designed, by its architects Ictinus and Callicrates, using Golden Ratio proportions.

POTTERY SHARD WITH A CIRCULAR MOTIF, HAGAR QIM TEMPLES, TEMPLE PERIOD.

THE PARTHENON, ATHENS, GREECE, 447-432 BC

A C B

Throughout history, mathematicians, artists, architects, biologists, musicians and practitioners of other disciplines have both utilised and

been beguiled by this ratio. Omnipresent in nature and consistently utilised as a design tool in architecture and art, Phi has been glorified

as the sacred canon of perfect proportion. The first definition of Phi was given by Euclid, the founder of geometry, in his book Elements,

in Ancient Greece, around 300 BC. The Ancient Greeks believed that harmony was divine and that divine proportion could only be

achieved through special numerical ratios. In the 4th and 5th centuries, mathematics adopted a philosophical and intellectual overlay to

add to its quantative and qualitative qualities. Later, it was Arab mathematicians who continued research into Phi. However, it was in the

12th and 13th century, through the work of Leonardo Fibonacci, that the Golden Ratio assumed its apex of importance and significance.

Through his study of a problem not remotely connected to Phi, Fibonacci developed and expanded the already mythical properties of

the Golden Ratio even further. It was through a study of the breeding habits of rabbits that he developed his theory of sequential growth.

(Vide the section on the Fibonacci Series below) The later Renaissance produced many artists and mathematicians, who utilised and

further studied and developed the qualities of this proportion. Piero Della Francesca and Leonardo Da Vinci himself, both wrote about

and made use of the Golden Ratio in their work. However, it was the mathematician and painter Luca Pacioli (1445-1517) who made

the most valid contributions to the study of Phi. In his book “Divina Proporzione” he went as far as to compare its properties to the

infallibility and incomprehensibility of God himself. Later, Pacioli’s blending of the mystical and mathematics was continued in the studies

of Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) leading to the Golden Ratio being understood to be present in all natural phenomena and its also

being consistently utilised by man as a proportional tool in all creative arts.

VITRUVIAN MAN BY LEONARDO DA VINCI

PAINTING OF LUCA PACIOLI ATTRIBUTED TO JACOBO DE BARBIERI, 1495

PACIOLI IS DEMONSTRATING A THEOREM OF EUCLID

LE CORBUSIER, CHURCH AT RONCHAMP, FRANCE, 1950-54RICHARD ENGLAND, MANIKATA CHURCH, MALTA, 1962-74

The last years of the 19th century then provided numerous literary publications on the subject and this renewed interest also flowed into the work

of the artists of that period. This curiosity was carried into the 20th century, the most valid contribution being that of the iconic master-architect

Le Corbusier, in his acclaimed publication Le Modulor. The Modulor, according to its author provided “a harmonic measure to the human scale,

universally applicable to architecture and mechanics”. Le Corbusier established his proportional theorem on the fact that the ratio of a man’s

height to the height of his navel was that of the Golden Ratio. Other bisections based on similar sub-divisional proportions were developed and

Le Corbusier believed that by using these ratios one could provide a standard universal harmony. Einstein, on viewing Corbusier’s Modulor, is

said to have commented that it was “a scale of proportions which makes the bad difficult and the good easy.”

MODULAR MAN BY LE CORBUSIER

To this day, the Golden Ratio continues to appear in many guises and aspects in the creation of the arts, from music to painting, sculpture and

architecture. Mario Livio, Head of the Science Division at the Hubble Telescope Science Institute has stated that “humans had no idea, however,

into what magical fairyland this product (the Golden Ratio) was going to lead them”. There is little doubt that Phi does provide fascinating ratios

and that it does in fact govern growth, development and expansion patterns in nature, and the whole of the universe. It remains, to this day, a

most fascinating and intriguing scale applicable from miniscule micro to endless macro.

The Fibonacci Series

Leonardo Fibonacci (1170-1240) in his 1202 book “Liber Abaci” contributed fascinating and novel interpretations and applications

in his studies of what he termed ‘new maths’ A mathematician, with a virtuosic command of number and its use, Fibonacci was able

to also extend and expand the essential properties, meaning and use of Phi. Studying the mating habits of rabbits, he discovered

a recursive sequence of vital mathematical importance. This, now termed Fibonacci Series, follows an expansion growth pattern

wherein each number is equal to the sum of the two preceding ones, i.e. 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, ....

The particular fascinating property of this series is that as the sequence expands further, it converges to the Golden Ratio. Again, as

with Phi itself, the Fibonacci Series was found to be existent in the basic syntax of the whole of nature. All propagation in fact seems

to be governed by this growth pattern, with plants and fruits offering perfect examples. The Fibonacci Series is inherent in both the

micro and macro worlds; from that viewed through the microscope to that detected only through the telescope.

FIBONACCI SEQUENCE

35

Spirals

The spiral, utilised by Norbert Francis Attard, as another generating form-maker in his Japan works, is one of man’s oldest symbols of

transition. It has, from ancient times, been read as not only the representation of regeneration, but also as an allegorical metaphor for

spiritual development and progression. The unfurling whorls of this curve have constantly evoked in man connotations of growth. Man

also read in the depiction of the spiral, seasonal changes and other expansion and contraction cycles in nature. Post the Paleolithic era,

the spiral is consistently found in Neolithic, Egyptian, Muslim, Indian and Japanese cultures. From the time of Attard’s native island’s

Neolithic temple carvings, to this day, the spiral symbolises symbiosis, transition, life cycles, perpetual regeneration and spiritual

progression. The spiral is present and prevalent in the sciences, in magic and mysticism, as also in the arts of all ages. As an ever

expanding infinite continuum, man has adopted it, over the ages, as his symbol for eternity, since it embodies both expansion and

contraction, together with the combined aspects of genesis and decline.

Spirals may be generated in two forms, either the Archimedean or the logarithmic. The former discovered by Archimedes in the 3rd

century BC, the latter also termed equiangular, by Descartes in the 17th century. In the Archimedean spiral, the distance between

the developing coils remains constant, as the spiral itself expands, while the differentiating property of the logarithmic spiral lies in the

gradual growth of the radius as the spiral itself develops. One of the most fascinating properties of the logarithmic spiral is that it can be

constructed from a rectangle with the proportions of the Golden Ratio, demonstrating an intriguing mathematical relationship between

this growth form and the ever magical number of Phi. It is on this equational correlation that Attard modelled his ± 1.618034

installation in the Fureai Park in Kamiyama.

The spiral, to this day, remains one of the archetypal symbols of mankind. Its existence in nature, from the minutiae of monocellular

organisms to the galactic entities of the universe, provides proof of the paramount importance of this form. It is also worth noting that

the double helix in the make up of the human DNA is made up of two concentrically twisted spiral tapes. Not dissimilar to the coiling

umbilical cord linking child to mother, the geometric format of the spiral has fascinated man from pre-history to today. It is therefore

not surprising, that an artist of the calibre of Attard, should return to its form and utilise it as one of his basic generative forces in his

innovative and avantgarde mathematical songlines.

LOW-RELIEF SCULPTURE, TARXIEN TEMPLES, MALTA, 3000 - 2500 BC

SKETCHES OF THE EIGHT PROJECTS

37

The Art Works

The senses delight in things duly proportional.

Thomas Aquinas

Norbert Attard’s interventions in Kamiyama focus specifically on, and draw their energy from primarily the power of place chosen for his art

works. This relationship to site, together with the inborn influence of the artist’s island origins, are brought together in a series of ebullient

anachronistic visceral mutations. Yet Attard’s fundamental anchoring tie in all these works, is his profound understanding of the discipline

and order to be found in the refined order of mathematics and its numerical framework. The artist brings together time past and time present

through the use of a revived esoterical magic of number. Attard is reviving from ancient times the use of the quality of number as opposed to

its computative quantity. He is expanding and extending its day to day quantative function to that of an elevated qualitative one. Number, as

understood and utilised by our ancient ancestors, as discussed before, was not only a functional mathematical tool, but its practical aspect was

always embedded with a strong symbolic overlay. Numbers were read not only as computational, but also as possessing higher values related

to both cosmic and divine revelation. Ancient civilisations all believed that mathematics was a ladder and bridge, which assisted man to reach

out to the realm of the divine; in the process knowing full well that number was also the prime form maker and propagator of harmony. Attard,

as an artist of today, returns us to these creeds. In the ancient world, as we have seen before, all was number. Today, dialectic mathematics

is a rigorous non-variable science of logic, where statements are either true or false. In ancient times, although solving real world problems,

mathematics was variable and pragmatic in its relationship to individual and particular problems. Attard, in his Japan works, metamorphoses

himself to become a rationalising artist as well as an irrationalising mathematician. His preoccupation with proportion led him to the obvious

investigations, studies and use of extraordinary and special numbers. From the remarkable qualities of Pi, to the satisfying proportions of the

Golden Section or Phi, together with the fascinating sequence of the Fibonacci Series and the eternal patterns of the spiral, Attard utilises this

bewitching alphabet to establish an intriguing lexicon and vocabulary, which he in turn then employs in relationship to the collective memory of

Malta and Japan to formulate formidable and valid art works. Much of his work in this direction may be said to evoke Nietzsche’s concept of the

eternal recurrence of time. As such, much of the work in Kamiyama could be defined as a combination of the aesthetic of place in a particular

time, brought together through the underlying chain-link of mathematics. This body of works is above all characterised by an aesthetic rigour

and sparsity, arrived at through Attard’s capability, in his maturity as an artist, of a spartan, lucid and discerning sense of selectivity. In a

way, it may be said that in these installations Attard has remarried myth and maths. The following analysis on the individual works in Kamiyama,

will I hope further inform and elucidate the reader as to the philosophy, work methodology and thinking process utilised by Attard, in the

making of these site-specific and number-ordered creations.

39

±1.618034

I do not know if God is a mathematician, but mathematics is the loom upon which God weaves the fabric of the universe.

Clifford A. Pickover

±1.618034 is a permanent sculpture installation located in the Souzou no Mori, Fureai Park, on the outskirts of Kamiyama. In this work utilising

concrete and water, perhaps more than in the others of the series, one sees the return of the architect-builder in the artist’s work. Consisting of

a cut-out cast-concrete logarithmic spiral platform containing water, and based on the Fibonacci Series, the prime function of this creative piece

is to enable the spectator to equate its man-made geometry to the natural landscape of the site. Primarily an art work which incorporates nature

into its surroundings, it also allows one to reflect on the hidden order of number, inherent in the generating grammar of its form. Specifically site-

oriented, it also provides viewers with reflected images of Kamiyama’s “God’s Mountain”. Because of its black-tinted reflective water surfaces,

the piece brings into play not only the location, but also the people who visit it. Shinto-oriented in terms of its relationship to nature and place,

it remains however a work which emanates from the essence of its mathematical proportions. Its beauty is realised through the harmony of

Phi, and the aesthetic order and elegance it constantly generates and displays. Here Attard establishes a bridge between earth, sky, man and

nature, and also a geographical connection between the isle of his origins and the site-specificity of the works location. This “spiral mirabilis”

hints to its spectators answers to man’s ever enigmatic question of “where do we come from and where are we going?”

43

With its water glimmering mirror surfaces evoking Ovid’s Metamorphoses myth of Narcissus, the installation provides an inverted variety of static

and kinetic symmetrical connotations, recalling the artist’s 2003 Malta installation “Salina’s Lament”, where the dialectics of image and reality

were also expressed in profound poetic intensity. Attard’s doubling of the real with the reflected in a Japanese setting provides a reference to the

mirror, an important mythological symbol in the country’s folklore, while also recalling mirror myths relating to the sun goddess Amaterasu.

Attard’s ±1.618034 art work exists not only as an artifact on its own, but is extended into a reflective duality, through its mirrored image, while also

allowing the observers’ vision to expand through these visual echoes into a labyrinth of doubled infinities. As in music, the work’s negative voids

and silences are as important as its positive form-making elements. Attard’s concept demonstrates visceral interplays of inversions, dualities

and binary images all of which pulsate in fascinating and playful interchangeabilities. The artist has here created an enchanting visual poem

that unifies image and reality and echoes in diametric symmetries observer and observed in advancing and receding interchanges between

spatial hereness and thereness. This work is an interventionalist’s subtle poetry, the verses of which must be sensed holistically, perhaps as

best expressed in Juhani Pallasma’s words through the eyes of the skin.

±1.618034

REINFORCED CONCRETE, WATER, BLACK WATERPROOF PAINT

CONSTRUCTED BY SHINYA OMINAMI CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, KAMIYAMA

CONSTRUCTION WORKERS: KOUTA NISHIMORI SYUSAKU TADA KIYOKAZU MATSUURA

SOUZOU NO MORI FUREAI PARK

Bluestone River

The footprints we leave behind us are of those who have passed before us.

Maria Cristina Crespo

.

A work of A-Oishi stone, sand and stone aggregate, located at the Kamiyama stone factory, Kamiyama, on the banks of the river Akui,

in between two randomly dumped mounds of discarded factory bluestone. The installation emanates from a single anti-clockwise

spiral, then develops into a true, undeviating line, culminating in two interconnecting spirals at its termination. Attard’s concept of

paving a disused intermediate zone recalls the Japanese concept of Ma, while the artist’s chosen iconography of the spiral form

is a particularly apt metaphor for the regenerative birth of an abandoned refuse-site. Attard seeks through this form to establish a

temporal equation of resuscitation and revival, between the chaos and disorder of the previous condition of the site and the new order

superimposed by the geometry of the applied artwork.

Attard’s bridge-building takes place, not only in the form of a physical link between the two sides of the discarded stone mounds,

but also in the more vital crossover and change in the character and nature of the site; from that of disuse to a pulsating and vital

art-form, the spiral forms providing excellent exponential symbols for the restored heart-beat given back to the site. Here Attard is

super-imposing a man-made order over a pre-existent arbitrary chaos. These whirling motifs are the expressed symbols of cyclic

expansion and growth in contrast to the linear passage flow of the river.

LOW-RELIEF PANEL SHOWING TREE-LIKE MOTIF, c.3000 BC

DETAIL OF SPIRAL SCREEN, TARXIEN TEMPLES, c.3000 BC

The artist is also establishing a relationship to the linear concept of time, expressed by the etched Euclidean central line in the

installation. Contrasting this with the whorl patterns of the end spirals, Attard establishes a connection between ancient and contemporary

understandings of time. This synthesis of contrasting time-readings is a duality which, to the Japanese mind, could evoke and echo

the essential essence of the Yin-Yang principle. The installation’s sparsity, together with the somewhat melancholy overlay of the grey

tones of the bluestone, re-kindles recollections of wabi and sabi. Attard’s symbiosis of time and space, interpreted also in terms of inter-

relationships between the indigenous and the imported, may perhaps be best summed up in the words of the Japanese architect Kisho

Kurokawa: “Our tradition is the challenge which exists in change ... we are not afraid to learn from others”.

Bluestone River

A-OISHI STONE (KAMIYAMA BLUESTONE), SAND. STONE CHIPPINGS

KAMIYAMA STONE FACTORY

EXISTING SITE BEFORE INTERVENTION

54

Earth Galaxy

Numbers are fundamental realities alive with memories and eloquent with meaning.

Vincent Foster Hopper

Again, etched on the banks of the River Akui, Attard creates a downsized artwork which may be interpreted as an echo of the ancient art of land

modelling. Only in the last century did the enthusiasm for shaping and forming the landscape wane. Here the artist re-designs the natural form

of the riverbank, re-modelling it as a poetry-garden inviting the waters of the river to enter. The artist is now no longer representing a landscape

but actually using it to re-evoke the lung-mei spirits and dragon-paths of Oriental geomancy. This specifically site-bound intervention, is a

land-art piece reminiscent of the earth works of Walter De Maria, Richard Long, Herbert Bayer and perhaps even more of Robert Smithson’s

“Spiral Jetty” 1970 intervention on Great Salt Lake, Utah, U.S.A. Earth Galaxy, although exiguous in scale, still provides considerable impact

on its observers, in its recollection of the Japanese art of Bonseki, those delectable Lilliputian miniscule stone and sand tray landscapes.

Despite its diminutive proportions, Attard’s creation is an impressive example of the artist’s fertile imagination. Furrowed into the earth, it

remains, similar to the others in this series, a work essentially disciplined, by the order of its overlying canvas of mathematics, number and

geometry. Earth Galaxy simultaneously recalls, utilises and reflects cosmic rhythmic laws and rules. This is a work, which to my mind, also

recalls the enigmatic crop circles and their geometries, with its elegance, symbolism and similar geometries echoing the synchronicities of

these mysterious phenomena, as also their makers’ (whoever they are) grasp of number and pattern-making.

Earth Galaxy

CANALS FORMED BY THE EXISTING PEBBLES

THE BANKS OF THE RIVER AKUI

59

Golden Sudachi

Why does mathematics fit so excellently the objects of physical beauty?

Albert Einstein

An indoor installation constructed within the walls of the Josei High School of the town, based on a three-dimensional interpretation of the

Fibonacci Series. Each new square generated has a side whose length is that of the sum of the last two squares’ sides. On the floor, within the

areas defined by the lower construction sides of the developing squares, a spiral is created, made up by drawing a quarter circle in each of

the generated squares. This floor spiral is composed of 12,000 sudachi fruits, an indigenous citrus lime of the region. While not site-specific in

relation to a specific external context, the work, through its utilisation of a local product, also relates specifically to place. It also involved work

and participation by the local community in the labour intensive and arduous work process of the collection of the sudachi, for its manifestation.

The artist, here, is not working with the landscape but with its produce. Golden Sudachi is a time-toil bricolage work that invites a haptic sensory

exploration. It is worth recalling that space and matter are measured, not only by the eye, but also by the ear, nose, skin and tongue. In this work,

the bouquet of the fruit evokes, in the observer’s memory, recollections of particular events or special places; for as we know too well, the nostrils

are capable of awakening forgotten images. It was Gaston Bachlelard who reminded us of the power of this sense in his “Poetics of Space”.

The sudachi aroma also provides added thresholds and gateways for the observer to cross, in order to enable him or her to participate with

greater depth in the work’s multi-dimensional qualities.

INTERIOR WALLS, GGANTIJA TEMPLES, GOZO..

MELONS AND PUMPKINS DRYING IN THE SUN, GOZO.

PITTED BACK OF ALTAR-LIKE MEGALITH, TARXIEN TEMPLES, c.3000 BC

Golden Sudachi

12,000 SUDACHI, WOOD, GREEN STAIN, FOUR LIGHTS

CARPENTRY WORK BY YOSHINOBU SHIRATSCUCHI AND KUOUICHI GOTO

GYM ROOM, KAMIYAMA JOSEI HIGH SCHOOL

SUDACHI (LIME) ORCHARD, KAMIYAMA, JAPAN.

69

Food Cycle

Geometry and number are the ideal philosophical language.

Plato

Food Cycle is an art-work installation consisting of a spectacular array of ethnic Maltese foods organised at the Kaizen Centre in Kamiyama.

The ingredients were particularly chosen by the artist to equate and mirror local Japanese produce. Rice and beans common to both Malta and

Japan, but cooked and presented in different ways are utilised by Attard to prepare and lay out this edible-art piece. The choice of boat shaped

containers hints at the journey undertaken by the Mediterranean items to their far eastern destination and perhaps also to the journey of the artist

himself. Mediterranean dietary habits, not unlike the Japanese, are also considered to be among the most nutritious and beneficial, providing

their respective countries’ inhabitants with a healthy longevity. It is interesting to again see that the ingredients of Attard’s art piece, are laid out

and arranged in strong geometric patterns within an ordered symmetry. The artist contrasts and combines edible products from the two countries

to draw parallels and divergences between their cultures.

SPRING EQUINOX, MNAJDRA TEMPLES, MALTA.

70

References are also made to the spring and autumn equinoxes, the time when day and night both have equal 12-hour durations. For agrarian

societies, equinoxes were always time-frames of paramount importance, establishing and mapping the date and time for both planting and

sowing of their crops In the layout of this piece, Attard also echoes Japan’s aesthetic considerations, in not only the preparation of food but

more so in its artistic presentation. The Japanese, perhaps more than other nations, have always regarded their food as a form of natural

medicine; thus each season has its particular food, and their diets are adjusted according to weather changes, and what is naturally in

season. This affinity with nature and its products remains to this day the main influential element of the Japanese cuisine. Of all the works in

the series, “Food Cycle” is the one which actions all five of the human senses, and its enactment may be viewed as a haptic polyphony of

the senses, inviting visitors to a multifarious participation, including that of finally consuming the art-work.

Food Cycle

RICE, CRACKERS, BEANS, BAKED RICE, 24 CERAMIC CONTAINERS, 2 TABLETOPS

COOK ASSISTANT: IKUYO MAENO

INTERNATIONAL FOOD FAIR, KAMIYAMA KAIZEN CENTRE

KAMIYAMA KAIZEN CENTRE

76

Earth Mother

Geometry has two great treasures; one is the theorem of Pythagoras, the other is the Golden Mean: the first is gold, the second silver.

Johannes Kepler

Situated within the sacred shrine of the Kami Ichinomija Oawa in Kamiyama, Earth Mother is a work that merits particular interest and attention.

For its making, Attard reorganised oversized wooden beads from the shrine itself into a tri-cellular layout plan based on a stylised version of a

Maltese Neolithic temple plan. The concept of a temple within a temple, distanced in time and space and yet connected in terms of a common

dedication to a deity, conceived as both provider of nature and protector of human life, presents a fascinating equation of sacrality installed

within sacrality. The Maltese temple plan is based on the articulated Ggantija layout of the island of Gozo. Its symmetrical amorphous curvilinear

forms contrast with the rigid linear sparsity of the orthogonally planned Shinto shrine, in an interesting interplay between content and container.

The organised axiality of the ascetic Shinto shrine (based on the Japanese Ken module) is also to be found in the curvaceous Malta temple

(proportional on the ancient measuring unit of the megalithic yard), since both are laid out symmetrically around a central axis, reminding us that

the ancients never read symmetry as uniformity, but always as unity, i.e. as a binding rather than dividing process. So much so that the Greek

word for symmetry may be interpreted as the ‘harmony of parts with each other, and with the whole’.

ANTHROPOMORPHIC STATUE, HAGAR QIM TEMPLES, MALTA, TEMPLE PERIOD..

79 AERIAL VIEW OF MNAJDRA TEMPLES, MALTA, 3600 - 2500 BC

The Orient and Occident through the forms of their buildings fashioned for divinatory and cosmological purposes, millennia apart, are drawn

together by Attard, through contrasts and similarities in their purpose and layouts, to remind modern man of the value and importance of

nature in today’s contemporary world. This typology of space-time translocation takes its viewers back to the two countries’ indigenous

sacred structures and emphasises not only the uniqueness and individuality of the buildings themselves but also their builders’ respective

beliefs, creeds and habits. The whole is replete with a play of both differentiating and parallel elements. In today’s complex electronic world,

despite Global Positioning System computers, which enable us to exactly locate ourselves in spatial co-ordinates, man still has an uneasy

relationship with his planet. On the other hand, both the practitioners of Shinto and the worshippers of the Earth Mother of ancient Malta,

considered mapping, morphing and place-making paramount to the establishment of an ecological linkage to the earth and its natural habitat.

Attard’s Earth Mother art-work reminds us of the importance of reinstating man’s relationship with his planet. In the making of this man-nature

link paradigm, Attard extends his activity from that of an installation artist to that of an admonitory environmentalist, heeding more than

necessary warnings to today’s desacralised contemporary life style.

Earth Mother

REORGANISED OVERSIZED WOODEN BEADS FROM THE SHRINE

KAMI ICHINOMIYA OAWA SHRINE

FRONT FACADE OF KAMI ICHINOMIYA OAWA SHRINE

Double Spiral

What is God? He is length, width, height and depth.

St Benedict of Clairvaux

This intervention, again constructed in the Josei High School, Kamiyama, consists of an installation of two large intertwining spiral forms,

together with four smaller spirals, all created by using Japanese slippers in a combination with other indigenous materials. The larger

spiral is then combined with other spirals, projected on the wall surface. The piece, which could be termed Attard’s glorification of the

spiral, also featured music by Keiju Nakajima. The two large major whorls intertwine, radiating outwardly and inwardly respectively;

the first as a metaphor of growth and generation, the second alluding to decline and degeneration. The slipper, as the constituent

element of this intervention, brings to mind its prime function of aiding human motion and movement, i.e. the transference in three

dimensional space by means of the passage of the fourth dimension, time. This work of fusion and separation, establishes an equation

between the two opposing spirals forming a constituent whole of progressive and regressive forces. The ancillary materials, consisting

of bluestone, dry leaves, sudachi and rice, utilised with the slippers in the composition, evoke the four seasons of summer, autumn,

spring and winter, as do also the four smaller spiral forms.

SPIRAL SCREEN, TARXIEN TEMPLES, 3000 - 2500 BC

87

The combination of positive and negative in the larger elements once again reiterates the artist’s interest in antithetic yet

integral relationships; for Attard understands all too well the necessity of marrying the centrifugal and the centripedal to

produce the balanced equilibrium of nature’s orderly and equitable life. In this work, the artist again creates a fascinating

relationship and connection between spatial distance and temporal space. Imaginative installationist that he is, Attard here performs

as a magician crossing the threshold of lost knowledge, while, diagramming mythical messages and metaphors for members of our

contemporary myth lacking society to read.

Double Spiral

SLIPPERS, RICE, SUDACHI, DRY LEAVES, A-OISHI STONE, 2 PROJECTORS, 5 LIGHTS

MUSIC COMPOSED BY KEIJU NAKAJIMA

COMPUTER AND VIDEO TECHNICAL SUPPORT BY YOICHI AMANO

LIGHTING BY MIYAGI HISANORI

TATAMI ROOM, KAMIYAMA JOSEI HIGH SCHOOL

91

Sacred Geometry

Make a round circle of the man and the woman, and draw out of this a square ....

Rosarium Philosophorum

Sacred Geometry, an installation again organised in one of the halls of the Josei High School, was created in collaboration and with the help

of twenty-four of the school’s pupils within the duration of a two-hour workshop. Utilising the ultimate non-art material of toilet paper, Attard

unwrapped the micro scaled spiral rolls to re-wrap them again around eight students positioned and laid out on a square plan. This process

provided an interesting curvilinear spiral form genealogy, as developed and evolved from the linear geometry of the four sides of a square. The

remaining sixteen students then formed a surrounding outer circle and they in turn were wrapped in toilet paper by the artist. The internal square

formed by the schoolchildren, was conceived as a symbol of the earth encircled by the outer circle, which Attard related to the planet’s revolving

celestial bodies, thus creating a micro representational form of a world-universe equation. The artist, again working in close collaboration with

the local community, utilises computations and combinations of mathematical data to create in a contemporary language re-echoes of Oriental

space-time concepts. As in all the works of this series, Attard is once more able to dissolve obscure barriers through his imaginative utilisation

of new methodologies thus enabling him to provide new understandings of the old.

BLACKBOARD SKETCH OF SACRED GEOMETRY EXPLAINING THE CONCEPT TO THE STUDENTS

MNAJDRA TEMPLES, MALTA, 3600 - 2500 BC

BACK FACADE OF GGANTIJA TEMPLES, MALTA, 3600 - 3100 BC.

Sacred Geometry

WORKSHOP: A COLLABORATION WITH 24 STUDENTS

24 ROLLS OF WHITE TOILET PAPER

GYM ROOM, KAMIYAMA JOSEI HIGH SCHOOL

97

Sparticles Series I, II, III, IV.

If we trace the artistic forms of things made by man to their origin, we find imitation of nature.

W.R. Lethaby

Attard’s Sparticles works are a post-Japan visit series, originating from the photographic records of the making processes of his Kamiyama

community works. On return to his Gozo studio, the artist digitally manipulated his photographic images to metamorphose them into new art forms,

again relying, as on the works themselves, on a mathematical and symmetrical order for their generation. Based on the same symmetry and order

exemplified in the Maltese Neolithic temple plans and Japanese Shinto temple layouts, Attard manipulates his recorded images into complex mirror

compositions evoking the super symmetries of fractal geometry. The term fractals was first coined by the Polish mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot.

It refers to the irregular geometry found in nature and to the whole system normally referred to as chaos. Fractals provide frames of reference

capable of describing forms, which cannot be depicted or portrayed in terms of Euclidean geometry. Mandelbrot, in his research, noticed that

many natural forms such as snow flakes, crystals, etc., displayed endless sequences of repeatable motifs. It was his attempts to mathematically

describe the components of such structures, that led him to the discovery of the theory of fractals.

AERIAL VIEW OF MNAJDRA TEMPLES, MALTA, 3600 - 2500 BC

LOW-RELIEF SCULPTURE, TARXIEN TEMPLES, MALTA, 3000 - 2500 BC

SPARTICLES SERIES I

SPARTICLES SERIES II

Fractals in nature are characterised by branching. It is exactly this property that Attard echoes and applies to this section of

his work. Through digital transformation, the artist takes portions of his recorded images and gradually manipulates and layers

them frame by frame, to achieve seamless symmetrical morphologies of repetitive patterns. Recalling ancient Islamic and Celtic

patterns, and re-echoing sacred Mandelic geometry, these juxtaposed sequences also mirror the inherent hidden chaos to

be found in all natural phenomena.

SPARTICLES SERIES III

ANTHROPMORPHIC STATUE, TEMPLE PERIOD

Appearing, initially, as simple pattern-making exercises Attard’s Sparticles however revel in the more complex and profound depths of

super symmetry, twin imagery and the convolution of recently evolved mathematical theories. Their intricate, yet ordered play on symmetry

and their compounded grammar are scripted in the throbbing theatre of Attard’s fertile imagination, and may indeed be termed mythical

palaces of the artist’s alchemistic mind. Attard’s current interest in these modern mathematical theories lies in the fact that they are based

on symmetries, a theme which has long fascinated and intrigued him.

SPARTICLE SERIES IV

Yet, this is a new symmetry termed ‘broken symmetry’ which exists in situations where the properties of configuration remain the same

after manipulation in rotation or in size. This body of work may initially give the impression that the artist may have initially plunged into

chaos; but on further study one becomes aware that he has, in fact, emerged artistically baptised as an architect of the imagination

with a production of highly organised and ordered images.

Conclusion

Plan your castle in the air and then build a ship to take you there.

Anon

In all of the works carried out during his six-week stay in Japan, Norbert Francis Attard demonstrated, not only his thought provoking creative

abilities through his penchant for number and geometry, but also his ability to meld and brew the mystical and alluring alchemy of mathematics

into visual poetics. In the process of making these installations, Attard, eclectic artist that he is, also reminds us of a past which man today has

chosen to forget. All the works point to the fact that contemporary man and his techno-sphere should be more cognizant of their place in the

universe, and also that they should relate more to the spiritual forces and sacrality of nature’s cyclic rhythms.

As an artist, Attard repeatedly emphasises the importance of this relationship, while clearly issuing a caveat against modern

man’s destruction of his ecological habitat. Attard’s plea sounds timely, for man has distanced himself from his planet and

the resulting consequences have been calamitous. The ancients, as we have seen, had a more understanding and pro-active

attitude to nature and its forces, through their understanding of geomancy. This art of placement embodied a multi-disciplinarian

coalescence of concepts borrowed from geography, geometry, number, religion, astronomy and mythology; all of which were

applied to architecture in relation to its site-specificity.

In today’s world of specialisation, pigeon-holing and categorising, man may well have made great progress in each of the individual

disciplines; but he has surely lost his understanding of the power of their amalgam. Ecological disasters such as the greenhouse

effect, deforestation and global pollution are all a result of man’s loss of this comprehension, and his consequential insensitivity

to nature and its forces. Through an art modelled on the rules of nature, Attard, in his installations, opens our mind to a pathway

towards our re-understanding and returning to a nature oriented life-style through the applied disciplines and grammar of nature’s

very own formative syntax of number and geometry.

The structured mathematical clarity of Attard’s Kamiyama works, together with their dependency on context for content, evidence his own

reverence of place, while also reflecting his nostalgia for the demise of a nature focused life-style. In this age of the encroachment of

technology over the laws of nature, it is welcoming to have an erudite artist like Attard metamorphose into a shaman and poet to walk us out

of the disorderly chaos of today’s world, and allow us to realise that we must return to once again embrace the ancient forces, to combine the

mythological and the mystical with the ecological.

Through his always interactive audience-sensitive installations and the manifest synergy of opposing energies, inherent in the works, Attard,

seeker of transcendence, restores to the contemporary world of megabytes and megacities, a series of visual and intellectual poems, which only

an artist of his sensitivity and calibre could devise. These are art works in which many disciplines and creative imagination come together to

recall archetypal memories, and decode ancient understandings of long vanished metaphors.

Attard’s artistic vision and imagination, together with his impeccable eye for detail, are further codified and ordered by the mathematical

genesis of the works, which besides being a delight to experience through the senses, also provide both intellectual and celebral stimulation

in their search and pursuit for the sublime. The European-Oriental cultural hybrid, together with the anachronistic time-frame coupling of the

pieces, make this series both intriguing and thought provoking. Forever a perennial seeker of magic, myth and mystery, Attard is an artist,

who, above all, is an exploratory chronicler of the intellect, linking the microscopic to the astronomical, yet always drawing from and utilising

the site and its surroundings as his proscenium. He constantly reminds us that we do not have to live in a Robo-Cop, Blade Runner world

and that there are alternative pathways to a return, through the symbiosis and re-combination of art and mathematics, for man to once again

understand and relate to the world as a sacred place.

My application for the Kamiyama artist-in-residency did not contain a specific proposal. I have always found it difficult, if not contradictory, to propose a detailed idea of one’s work for a place never visited before, especially when expected to create site-specific work, or any kind of works related to the context of a place. My proposal relied mostly on my integrity as an artist, basing my credibility on past works. I was very excited about my participation because, if chosen, it would have meant realizing, for the very first time, works created in Japan, something I had dreamt of doing for a long time. In the past, I had already undertaken three short visits to Japan and my interest in Japanese culture began over 25 years ago when I was a print maker of limited edition prints.

I was aware that Kamiyama meant ‘God’s Mountain’. From the beginning I knew that this simple fact was going to be artistically significant to my work. The links between my Maltese background and my experience in Japan were also imperative to me as I wanted to explore deeper into the two different cultures. The eventual final works had to connect, relate and be inspired by the context of the place itself. This kind of connection was unimaginable while still in Malta. I had to wait until I experienced Kamiyama for myself, in order to discover its particular traditions and customs, its indigenous materials as well as the physicality of the place, its history and social life. I had no idea how, in what way, and to what extent, I was going to interact with the community. This alone could not only influence the work but could also be a key determining factor.

After having done some research, I discovered that both Japan and Malta celebrated fourteen official national holidays. Delving deeper into the subject I then discovered that Japan celebrat-ed two particular holidays, which are the spring and autumn equinoxes. This plain fact resulted in me establishing a connection with the Maltese prehistoric temples, particularly the temple of Mnajdra, which was built around 3500 BC. These magnificent free-standing stone structures are older than both Stonehenge in England and the Pyramids in Egypt. The architecture of the temple of Mnajdra is both beautiful and inspiring, its scale impressive yet human. The architectural organisation permits and enables the observation of the spring and autumn equinoxes as well as the summer and winter solstices. This connection was the very beginning of a series of works which I have named Between Earth and Sky.

ARTIST’S DIARY NORBERT FRANCIS ATTARD

109

By means of this initial connection I then decided to make use of geometric symbols for my projects; most especially the spiral, and the inclusion of par-ticular mathematical theories. I used the spiral motif not only because it is found in most Maltese prehistoric temples but also because it is a symbolic representation of time. The spirals’ combined characteristics of cyclic and linear expansion represent one of the best metaphors for time. All the works I created in Kamiyama are all about past and present time. Ultimately, all these works are connected to the cycle of nature and therefore also to Shinto, the indigenous Japanese religion which means, ‘the way of the Gods’. Shinto seems to have grown out of the awe for manifestations of nature that included the sun, water, rock formations, trees and even sounds.

Even before I arrived in Kamiyama I was aware that we had to participate in a number of events which involved the community in particular ways. In fact, the Cultural Exchange Programme consisted of a number of events: for example the International Food Fair was an evening where the three invited artists had to cook a traditional dish belonging to their country. Other events involving the community were the Open Studio, where the community had a chance to interact directly with the artist, whilst simultaneously being able to witness the process of their works, and the Workshop; which was set-up for high school students in one of the local schools. The Exhibition Period, which lasted four days, was our last opportunity to interact with the public. This part of the programme was considered as extra curricular; separate from the art work which each artist had to produce during the residency. Yet, for the first time in my life, I felt I wanted to create works of art that integrated the cultural exchanges in a direct manner. From an early stage I knew I wanted to create a body of work involving different materials and disciplines, as well as works incorporating the five senses.

Sacred Geometry was one of the first works to be created in Kamiyama and it involved the participation of a number of students. After explaining the signifi-cance and meaning of the use of spirals in my project I informed one particu-lar teacher that toilet paper was in itself a spiral in its form. This was the main reason why I wanted to use this material. I needed the participation of twenty-four students for the project. Sixteen students were to unwrap the toilet paper and rewrap it around the remaining eight students. The rewrapping was also in itself another form of spiraling. I explained in detail the significance of the geometrical formation of the two groups of students: eight students were to form a square representing the earth, whilst the rest of the group formed a circle to represent the sky. The formation of the eight students potentially also formed a spiral. After a first sign of disapproval, Misa Matsuura was sympathetic to my ideas, so I managed to convince the school authorities to continue my work. Working at Josei High school was very enjoyable as everyone was extremely friendly and supportive.

the fundamental theory of supersymmetry is that every particle in the standard model has a supersymmetric twin and that each sparticle is related to its twin par-ticle, but it is not the same..... Symmetries are a powerful tool for figuring out the underlying structure of an object. In a sense, a symmetry is simply a fancy term for a pattern, and science is, at its heart, a search for patterns.

This symmetry reminded me of the typical plan of the Maltese prehistoric temple which is a mirror image of itself along its axis. It occurred to me that this series of photographic images had to be constructed keeping in mind this idea of symmetry, mirror-imaging and pattern.

At Josei High School, I was allocated two large spaces to create my works in: the kendo room, used for teaching martial arts, and the gym, which had a parquet floor. I was delighted to have such large working areas. One of the first things I noticed at the school was the multitude of Japanese slippers lying on the floor, most especially at every main entrance to the building. Fortuitously, I began to realize that these slippers had great potential for an installation. I had no problem borrowing a few boxes of slippers to experi-ment with. Seeing as my first experiment resulted as successful, I asked for more slippers. Eventually, I ended up needing so many slippers that I asked a number of people to help me get as many slippers as possible from all around Kamiyama. Within a week, small crates loaded with slippers were arriving from all over the place: it seemed I had appropriated all the slippers in Kamiyama! I created many variations of spirals using these slippers yet I still ended up not having enough slippers to show all the examples I had created. However, in the meantime, I was documenting each piece, not knowing exactly how I was going to use all the photographic material I had accumulated. Double Spiral, worked out beautifully because I created one large central double spiral and four smaller spirals, representing the four seasons. All natural energy forms spirals, with one spiral radiating outward, centrifugally, and the other interrelated spiral generating inward, centripe-tally, creating a vortex of energy that looks like a tornado. The positive spiral seems to radiate outward from the centre and the negatively charged spiral seems to draw inward, simultaneously, toward the centre. This was the only work to use sound and Keiju Nakajima’s beautiful music created just the right mood for this installation. We also had to obtain two laptop computers and two video projectors to realize the projections. After preparing the two necessary slideshows on my laptop computer, Yoichi Amano, helped me install them onto the other two computers. He also helped me install the two video projectors and all the necessary audio equipment. Without his techni-cal assistance, this installation would not have been possible.

Golden Sudachi, is the installation I created in the gym, and this was inspired by the Fibonacci Sequence. The Golden Number or Divine Proportion is one

KAMIYAMA GARDEN AT JOSEI HIGH SCHOOL

110

KAMIYAMA SUDACHI (LIME) ORCHARD

of those mysterious natural numbers that seem to arise out of the basic structure of our cosmos. Unlike those abstract numbers, however, phi appears clearly and regularly in the realm of things that grow and unfold in steps, and that also includes living things. I was inspired to represent the Fibonnaci Theory by creat-ing a three-dimensional structure. Golden Sudachi required the expertise of a carpenter to put a timber structure together. Even though the design of the tim-ber structure looked simple, it required elaborate scaffolding to be put together. I was taken by Masahito Hara, an architect and one of the committee members, to a nearby timber factory to select and purchase the appropriate wood and then to explain what I needed to an able carpenter by the name of Yoshinobu Shiratsuchi. Sudachi is a lime which is locally grown; Kamiyama and the entire region are famous for this fruit; since it was very much a local product I decided to use sudachi for my installation. Again, one particular committee member, Yas-unobu Aihara, came to my rescue. He was the one responsible for providing me with all the sudachi I required. Sudachi are generally collected during this period so I considered it essential to participate in this activity. Three days before the opening, 12,000 sudachi arrived in crates. Several of the committee members including two interpreters and a number of local people, helped me place the sudachi on the floor. Without the help and support of the community these two installations created at Josei High school would not have materialised.

In the meantime I was thinking about two other major projects, both involving a different kind of construction and both being carried out at the same time. I was invited to create a permanent work in Fureai Park, a park where several other permanent installations and sculptures (former artists who were previously invited to the residency), could already be found. I was particularly excited about this project because it was to be my first permanent piece in Japan. I named my work in Fureai Park ±1,618034, representing the Golden Number which was once again based on the theory of the Fibonacci Sequence. There was a single

area where this work could be placed but unfortunately there were three trees obstructing it. This was a smaller problem than I had imagined as it was made possible to replant the trees in the vicinity. This sculpture installation included the use of water which acted as a mirror to reflect the surrounding landscape. It was my intention to fuse the Kamiyama Mountains and my art work into one. Seeing as the project required the preparation of some architectural drawings, before we started the construction, I remember going to Masahito Hara’s house to make use of one of his architectural drafting boards. The construction works were carried out by outstanding professional builders, employed by Shinya Ominami, owner of a construction company and also an important committee member of the resi-dency. Throughout my residency, Mr.Ominami in particular was instrumental in more ways than one, most especially in this work. He also involved himself in most of the works I created in Kamiyama.

Just as one perceives the influence of the sea surrounding Malta, the pres-ence of River Aqui in Kamiyama was strongly felt as it passed through the town. If I had had more time I could have created a whole series of works along the River Aqui but time was short, so I had to resort to creating only one work. Earth Galaxy was completed within the same day. The pebbles along the river were almost at a par with the water level, thus by digging a narrow canal one found water a few centimetres below the surface of the pebbles. Again, I created a series of canals using spiral motifs. These canals were linked to the river itself, so that the water from the river filled and passed through the canals. It was a simple intervention but very effective; creating this piece gave me great satisfaction. This work did not last long because two days later a typhoon hit Kamiyama and destroyed it completely.

Bluestone River involved a floor construction with a-oishi stone. I was interested in working with a-oishi stone because it was a stone quarried around this area. Stone

KAMIYAMA MOUNTAINS AND RIVER AQUI

111

KAMIYAMA TYPICAL STREET TOKUSHIMA AWA ODORI DANCE

quarries have always been specifically significant for me, maybe because I have been living next to some extraordinary Globigerina limestone quarries for so many years. The nearby stone factory situated along River Aqui was one of many sites that I found very appealing. The area I was interested in consisted of a rough road that almost led to the river. It was lined on both sides with unused and discarded boulders of bluestone. It was a disturbed place. I wanted to give this area new life by ‘renovating’ it as one does with a dilapidated building. I included a few spirals in my design, spirals that were similar to the ones found in the Maltese prehistoric temples. Once again, I chose the spiral motifs because I had noticed the formation of spiralling eddies by the rushing waters in the river on several occasions. I also imagined I was bridging and unifying the two sides of this rough road by creating a river of stone in between, as well as relating it to the river nearby.

Earth Mother, the last work I created in Kamiyama was in a Shinto temple, spe-cifically in the Kami Ichinomiya Oawa Shrine. I was fascinated by the oversized meditation or prayer beads found lying in the temple. Seeing as the temple was dedicated to a Goddess I wanted to somehow integrate these beads with my eventual creation. The Maltese prehistoric temples also had a Goddess at the centre of their cult - the Goddess of Fertility, abundance, harvest, creation and regeneration. Interestingly enough, the figurines representing this goddess extant in Malta, are of the same shape as the temples; they not only symbolize fertility, but also the Earth itself, as the eternal Mother, the womb of incarnation. Thus, I thought that using the beads for creating a typical layout plan of our temples and placing them within the Shinto temple would somehow work out as an interesting justaposition. Again, my intervention was minimal, yet this work carried great personal significance.

Probably, the aspect of Kamiyama which impressed me the most was its wonderful nature. We had several typhoons which would last a day or two but

always followed by the most glorious weather, which transformed Kamiyama into a magical place. The residency included other interesting activities: the site visits around Kamiyama were delightful, yet the two most memorable experiences were the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum and experiencing the Awa Odori (The Fool’s Dance) in Tokushima City. I still feel captivated by the chant of this powerful dance to this very day. Dining with the local residents in their private homes was a special experience, as was the opportunity to visit the Onsen, the famous natural hot springs of Japan. I loved being in Kamiyama, yet living there was not always easy. The language barrier posed the major problem, even though we had able translators to help us commu-nicate with those who did not speak English. Hitomi Kurochi, Hisako Yoshida and Hideko Blodgett Nagashima were three gifted interpreters who were very dedicated to their work. Yet their job was not easy, as many times they also took on the role of artist’s assistants. Even though this was my fourth visit to Japan, it was the first time living there for a length of time - a wonderful opportunity to acquire a more profound understanding of Japanese culture. My residency proved challenging and somewhat hard because I chose to undertake a great deal of work in a short time. In spite of some difficulties, the residency was very well organized and efficient, a Japanese trait which is much to be admired.Many people assisted in my eight projects. My deepest appreciation goes to all the Kamiyama artist-in-residence committee mem-bers and interpreters, to all the teachers and students of Kamiyama Josei High School and to all the inhabitants of Kamiyama. It is important to reiterate that without their commitment and support, the realization of my works would have not been possible. I firmly believe that all these works were not only a challenge for myself but also, I believe, a challenge for the committee, and the entire community. I am deeply indebted to the generosity of all these people. One cannot separate the work from the spirit of the place and the involvement of the community.

113 THE ARTIST AT TARXIEN TEMPLES, MALTA, 2006 PHOTOGRAPH BY PATRICK FENECH

NORBERT FRANCIS ATTARD

ARTIST’S BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

EXHIBITIONS OF INSTALLATIONS AND PROJECTS POST 1997

EXHIBITIONS OF PAINTINGS AND GRAPHICS 1976 - 1997

SELECTED BOOKS AND EXHIBITION CATALOGUES

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY POST 1977

NORBERT FRANCIS ATTARD AT HIS STUDIO IN GOZO, 2004 PHOTOGRAPH BY MARC SPITERI

Norbert Francis Attard, an installation artist, has made a name for himself with his poetic and original approach to a varied series of artistic

projects in diverse international contexts. His work combines social, cultural and political aspects together with overlays of scientific and

religious themes. He subjects the employment of unorthodox materials to his architect’s disciplined eye for detail.

Born in Malta in 1951, Attard now works from his Gozo-based studio. The unique pre-history of Malta and Gozo within a distinctive Mediterranean

culture have provided inspiration for many of his works. Trained as an architect, he practiced the profession for twenty years until 1996, during

which period he also worked as an artist creating paintings, prints, posters, postage stamps and other works. In 1998 he turned to installation art

and has since worked in several disciplines, blurring the boundaries of architecture, sculpture, video and photography. His work is multi-layered

causing shifts of meaning, a displacement of signs and symbols that create unsettling tension. Bold poetic use of irony, duality, dichotomy and

ambivalence combining every-day objects has become readily recognizable in his work.

He is a founding member of Artists in Nature International Network (1998) based in France; stART (2002) - a group of Maltese contemporary

artists; a committee member of the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts (2002-2005) and director of Gozo Contemporary (2001) - an art space,

offering self-directed residencies on the island of Gozo.

He has created many site/context-specific installations in several countries and has participated in many collective international exhibitions:

in Scotland, England, Cuba, Austria, Italy, Spain, Germany, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Turkey, Israel, Greece, South Korea, Australia, U.S.A.,

Japan and Taiwan. His work has been exhibited at the Liverpool Biennale, the Havana Biennale, the Edinburgh International Festival, and in

the Echigo Tsumari Triennale in Japan, amongst others. He represented Malta at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999.

His most recent book publications are I See Red Everywhere (2002) and Four Olympics (2004).

ARTIST’S BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

116

2007TURN.to colour, Curated by Miria Swain. ARRIVALS: Art from the New Europe,

Commissioned by Turner Contemporary, U.K. Margate Pier, Margate, UK.

Artifecture, Curated by Vince Briffa, Malta Today newspaper.

Albury Cantata, Commissioned by Albury Regional Gallery , Directed by Kevin Wilson.

Inauguration of Albury Library Museum, Albury, N.S.W., Australia.

Interventions in the Landscape: Paradise Revealed, Curated by Christine Gist.

Organised by St. Margaret’s Bay Trust. Pines Gardens, Dover, Kent, U.K.

Flag Metamorphoses, concept by and in collaboration with Myriam Thyes:

FLEFF, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival, Ithaca, NY, USA.

DUTA biennale des arts visuels, Douala, Cameroon.

Traverse Video, Toulouse, France.

Projected Weekends,The Digital Hub, Dublin.

Victory Plaza, large screens by Victory Media Network, Dallas (TX), USA.

One Minute Film & Videofestival, Kunstraum Aarau, Switzerland.

Tactics of Resistance, Exhibition Centre Constantin Brancusi, Chisinau, Republic of Moldovia.

URBAN SCREENS, in collaboration with BBC, Manchester, U.K.

Pixilerations [v.4] media art festival, FirstWorksProv, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

3rd Jacarta International Video Festival, Jacarta, Indonesia.

Virtual Residency, Curated by Monika Bohr, Claudia Brieske, Leslie Huppert and Gertrud

Riethmullerin. Europaisches Zentrum for Kunst und Industriekultur, Volklingen, Germany.

Move Me, Video Channel 2007, Curated by Wilfried de Agricola Cologne.

Tile Project, organized by Transcultural Exchange, Boston, U.S.A.,

Wallace Emerson Park, Toronto, Canada.

Guadalajara’s Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudio Superiores de Occidente, Mexico City.

20063rd Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale, Directed by Fram Kitagawa.Tokamachi, Japan.

Self Portrait–A Show for Bethlehem, Curated by Wilfried de Agricola Cologne,

Bethlehem International Center, Palestine.

Casoria Museum of Contemporary Art Naples, Italy.

Museo Arte Contemporaneo Santa Fe, Argentina.

MACRO - Museo Arte Contemporaneo Rosario, Argentina.

Officyna Art Space Szczecin, Poland.

Museum of Swinoujcie, Poland.

2nd Athens Video Art Festival, Athens, Greece.


Electronic Language International Festival, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

AniMOweb Festival, Modena, Italy.

Independent Arts Festival, Sztuka Fabryka, Sint-Niklaas, Belgium.

dLux Media Art, d/Art/2006 Festival, Sydney Opera House, Australia.

Main Stations in Zurich, Bern, Basel, Geneva, Lausanne, Switzerland.

8th International Digital Art Exhibit, Havanna, Cuba.

Experimental Film + Video Festival Seoul, South Korea.

EXHIBITIONS OF INSTALLATIONS AND PROJECTS POST 1997

Paraflows 06, Vienna, Austria.

Square Eyes Festival, Arnhem, The Netherlands.

Avanca Festival, Intl. Meeting of TV, Cinema, Video and Multimedia, Avanca, Portugal.

25 years / 25 artists, Curated by Dennis Vella, Middle Sea House, Floriana, Malta.

PixelDance Video Festival, Thessaloniki, Greece.

3rd International Ceramic Tile Triennale. Organised by Igneri Foundation,

Museum of Modern Art, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Europos Parkas, Vilnius, Lithuania.

Olympic Landscape Sculpture travelling international exhibtion visiting Beijing,

Tianjin, Xiamen, Zhengzhou, Changchun, Taiyuan, Shijiazhuang, Ningbo, Nanning,

Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Macao, China.

Magnetic Chemistry, Expo Science 2006, University of Malta, Tal-Qroqq, Malta.

2005Artists against Sedition Laws, Curated by Nicholas Tsoutas,

Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, Australia.

Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena, Organized by John David Mooney Foundation,

International Currents Gallery, Chicago, U.S.A.

Elisabeth or to be a man, stage design and video projection by Norbert Francis Attard.

Opera by Charles Camilleri, Libretto by Peter Serracino Inglott, Valletta Waterfront, Malta.

The Exhausted Body, Curated by Nina Dimitriadi,

Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

Intervene: Artist’s Diary, Curated by Ashley Chang, Taipei Artists Village, Taipei, Taiwan.

We the people of Eurovision, Sports Palace, Kiev, Ukraine.

Obsession, The International Video Festival, Curated by Gulsun Erbil

and Sinasi Gunes, Galerie X, Istanbul, Turkey.

Hundred artists for a Museum, Curated by Antonio Manfredi,

Casoria Museum of Contemporary Art, Naples, Italy.


Videonale, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany.

Fantoche Animation Festival, Baden, Switzerland.

Electronic Language International Festival, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The World Calligraphy Biennale of Jeollabuk, Curated by Yoon Yin Sup,

Sori Arts Centre, Jeollabuk, South Korea.

Skin of Skins, concept by and in collaboration with Diciembre Aguilar:

Hong Kong Biennial, Central Hong Kong, China.

Lagoon of Venice, Venice Biennale, Italy.

V International Festival of Barcelona Contemporary Art, Spain.

Gallery ‘La Santa’Proyectos Culturales, Barcelona, Spain.

Unclaimed Baggage, Curated by Klitza Antoniou, Melita Couta, and Michael Panayiotis,

Circulo de Bellas Arte, Madrid, Spain.

Blitz, Organised by START and Fondazzjoni Wied Atna,

Curated by Raphael Vella, Malta at War Museum, Vittoriosa, Malta.

117

2004ARTiade, Olympics Games of the Visual Arts, Curated by Tereza de Arruda, Athens, Greece.

www.transeuropa, Curated by Elisabeth Haas, Kulturverband Favoriten, Vienna, Austria.

ART Expo, Mexico 04, Solaris / Observatorio, Michoacan, Mexico.

Nomadifesta, Curated by Klitza Antoniou, Melita Couta, Michael Panayiotis,

Organised by Artrageous Group, Nicosia, Cyprus. Kastelliotossa, Nicosia, Cyprus, 2004.

Nonstop, Madrid 2004, Pabellon de La Pipa, Recinto Ferial de Casa de Campo, Madrid.

PLAY III - International Video Art Festival, Museo de Arte “Ángel M. De Rosa”,

Junìn, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Biennale Internazionale di Ferrara, Sale dell’Imbarcadero del Castello Estense, Ferrara, Italy.

Signes de Nuit, Cinema de Balzac, Paris, France.

Kamiyama-Artist-in Residence, Kamiyama - cho, Tokushima Prefecture, Japan.

20038th Havana Biennale, Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabana, Havana, Cuba.

Organized by Wilfredo Lam Foundation. Directed by Hilda Maria Rodriguez.

Paths to Europe, Curated by Dimitri Konstantinidis and Monika Sielska,

Macedonia Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece.

Escape, Curated by Austin Camilleri, Old Prisons, Citadella, Victoria, Gozo, Malta.

Borders, Curated by START and Richard Davies, Pinto Stores, Valletta Waterfront, Malta.

Scenes of Perspective, Curated by Alexander Rogagos Megakles, Artower Agora, Athens, Greece.

House of Cards, ‘Blueprint Faker & Citadel Makers’ (A-Z of Virtual Municipality),

Curated by Mike Dawson, Debenhams Windows, Manchester, England.

Palestrina and Hell, Curated by Eva Jacob, Johanniterkirche, Feldkirch, Austria.

Intervention I, Curated by Paul Gilby, Orgaized by Relative Media and in collaboration with

Urban Splash (Liverpool), Lister’s Mills, Bradford, England.

Magnet II, Curated by Paul Gilby, Organized by Relative Media, U.K.

(FEVA), Art Apartment Gallery, Knaersbourgh, U.K.

Urban, University of Malta, Tal-Qroqq, Malta.

Post-Civilisation, Curated by Lee Jiun-shyan, Huang Hai-ming and Chang Hsin-pi,

Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival, Kaohsiung,Taiwan.

2002 Beyond Conflict, Curated by Paul Gilby, The Oratory, Liverpool Anglican Cathedral,

2nd Liverpool Biennial (Independent), Liverpool, England.

Tu Es Petrus, Curated by Paul Gilby, Organized by Relative Media and in collaboration with

Urban Splash (Liverpool), St.Peter’s Church, Liverpool, England.

One Extreme to Another, Curated by Donna Rae, St.Leonard’s School, St. Andrews, Scotland.

Love is all there is, Curated by Blink Red, Edinburgh International Festival, Scotland.

Uber, Curated by Mark Mangion, Portomaso, Malta.

Cityspaces, Curated by Raphael Vella, Organized by START and Y.M.C.A.

Old Mint Street, Valletta, Malta.

Virgin Valley, Curated by David Darmanin, D-Club, Rabat, Malta.

Calpe Festival, Gibraltar.

2001The Floating Land, Curated by Kevin Wilson, International Site Specific

Art Laboratory. Wejba Creek, Noosa, Queensland, Australia.

Sticks and Stones, Curated by Peggy Smith, Woodford Festival, Queensland, Australia.

2000/70, The road to Meikle Seggie, National Gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania.

Bed of Roses, GOZO contemporary, Gharb,Gozo, Malta.

Art and Finance, Curated by Eva Jacob, Organized by Hypo Bank, Vaduz, Liechtenstein.

20002000/70, The road to Meikle Seggie, Organized by Demarco European Art Foundation,

Edinburgh, Scotland. Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston upon Thames, U.K.

2000/70, The road to Meikle Seggie, Organized by Demarco European Art Foundation,

Edinburgh City Art Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Back to Babel, Art in Malta Today, Curated by Joseph Paul Cassar,

Inauguration of St. James Cavalier, Center of Creativity, Valletta, Malta.

Ora Pro Nobis, 3rd. Biennale of Chrisian Art, Cathedral Museum, Mdina, Malta.

1999 Larger than Life II, Curated by Adrian Bartolo, 48th Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy.

Matthew Gallery, Edinburgh International Festival, Scotland.

Diaspora, International Art Meeting, Curated by Javier Baron, Orlando Britto Jinorio,

Luciano Escanilla, Anke Mellin, Andres Pereiro, Cuco Suarez, Ciudad de Oviedo, Spain.

2nd Biennale di Firenze, Curated by John T. Spike, Florence, Italy.

Re-Interpreting Preti, Organized by the National Museum of Fine Arts, Curated by

Dominic Cutajar, Adrian Bartolo and Theresa M. Vella, St. James Cavallier, Valletta, Malta.

Rites of Passage, 31st December Millenium Project,

Curated by Pater Serracino Inglott, Auberge de Castille, Valletta, Malta.

From Hagar Qim to the ring of Brodgar, Organized bt Demarco European Art Foundation,

Edinburgh, Scotland. National Martime Museum, Vittoriosa, Malta.

Nature Art Indoor Exhibition, Kongju, South Korea.

1998 XIX Biennale of Alexandria, Egypt.

Frequenzen Group, Kultur-und Kongress Zentrum, Rosenheim, Germany.

Frequenzen Group: German-Maltese Circle, Valletta, Malta; Ministry of Gozo, Rabat, Gozo;

European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium; National Museum of Fine Art, Valletta, Malta.

Grands et Jeunes d’aujourd hui, Paris, France.

Masks of Venice, Palazzo Correr, Venice, Italy.

Gallery of the Regierung von Oberbyern, Munich, Germany.

Earth Temple, Curated by Ludwig Frank, Olympia Park, Munich, Germany.

Breath, Curated by Park Byoung Uk. International Art Symposium, Chonju, South Korea.

1997Rabb Galerie, Neumarkt a.d. Raab, Burgenland, Austria.

2007

Arrivals: Art from a New Europe. published by Modern Art Oxford and

Turner Contemporary, UK. pp. 196, 198-201.

Time, landscape and response - a conversation with Norbert Attard,

Chris Miller, Landscape Outlook magazine, Sydney, Australia.

Video part of something bigger, Jonathan Wright, ABC Goulburn Murray,

http://www.abc.net.au/goulburnmurray/stories/s1976991.htm, Albury, Australia.

Norbert Attard’s Stone Pier, www.turneroundmargate.com, 11 March.

Harbour seen in a new light for celebration, Chris Denham, Thanet Extra, 23 March.

2006

The Exhausted Body, exhibition catalogue, Texts by Mario Azzopardi and

Margarita Sanchez Prieto. Published by Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan.

3rd Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale exhibition catalogue, pp. 87, 258.

published by Front Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.

Twenty -five years / 25 artists, Text by Dennis Vella, Exhibition catalogue

published by Middle Sea House, Floriana, Malta.

Music and Art: Ian Boddy, Sound on Sound magazine, U.K., February Issue.

Taipei Artist Village, Annual catalogue, p.40.

2005

Blitz, Exhibition catalogue, Text on Norbert Francis Attard by Michael J. Mumford.

2005 World Calligraphy 5th.Biennale of Jeollabuk-do, Exhibition catalogue, p.72.

Kamiyama Artist in Residency, Exhibition catalogue, pp. 8, 9, 14, 15, 16.

Introduction by Masaki Mori, Text by Aomi Okabe.

Global Art, Helena Gagureeva, Viatico magazine, No.36,

Casoria Museum of Contemporary Art, Naples, Italy.

A late summer hotbed of art, Susan Kenzulak, www.en.pots.com.tw, Sept.

Top Maltese Art Export, Michael J. Mumford, Sunday Times, 15 May.

100 Artists for a Museum, exhibition catalogue, pp. 24,25.61,

Casoria International Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy.

Go East, Stanley Borg, Grip, MIA flight magazine, May/June issue, p.17.

Paths of Europe, catalogue, pp.76-81,110-111, published by Apollonia, Strasbourg, France.

Blitz, and the gap between art and life, Vicky Spiteri, The Sunday Times, 24 April.

Norbert Francis Attard at Naples Art Museum, Anon, Sunday Times, 12 June.

Design, AF Sign Studio publication, pp. 262-265.

2004

Four artistic statements by Norbert Francis Attard, Tereza de Arruda,

The Sunday Times, Malta, Sept.19.

A Liberated Artist, Michael J.Mumford, Homeworks magazine, 8.04, pp. 26-33.

Gazet’Art Magazine, SEECAN South-East European Contempory Art. No.2, pp.1, 20.

Kaohsiung strives for Art, Chinese Art News, 1/2004, magazine issue No.72.

Art and more contained within, Susan Kendzulak, Tapei Times, January, p.19.

Installation Art in Malta, Mario Azzopardi, Kultura 21, Feb. 2004, pp.15,16.

I left my art in Kamiyama, Martin O’Brien, Awa Life magazine, December Issue.

Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival, exhibition catalogue, pp.78, 79.

Norbert Francis Attard and Antonio Manfredi, Interview by Yeorghios Georgiou, HARAVGI

newspaper, Cyprus, 30 May.

2003

Bienal Adentro, Carina Pino-Santos, La Jiribilla, Havana, Cuba, No.131.

Where dollars speak louder than protest, Jason Edward Kaufman,

The Art Newspaper, No.142, December Issue, p. 27.

Escape, exhibition catalogue, Austin Camilleri

Palestrina and Hell, exhibition catalogue, Eva Jacob,

Kulturreferates der Stadt Feldkirch, Austria.

Nicht von dieser Welt, Ariane Grubner, Voralberger Nachrichten, 28 May.

Norbert Francis Attard: Palestrina and Hell, Interview by Eva Jacob, Anzeiger, 22 May.

Feldkirch-im Banne der Kunst, Ulrike Breit, Kultur, Neue Voralberger Tageszeitung, 30 May.

100 Contemporary Artists, Volume 1, World of Art Books, Stockholm, Sweden. pp.166-167.

Life and imprisonment, Stanley Borg, The Times, Malta, June.

Borders, START catalogue, Richard England, pp. 4-9.

Palestrina and Hell, Opening speech by Ekehard Schneider, Sunday Times, Malta, 6 July.

The International Dictionary of Artists Who Painted Malta,

2nd edition, Nicholas De Piro, AVC Publishers. p.16.

8th Havana Biennale, Wilfredo Lam Foundation, exhibition catalogue, pp.91, 264.

2002

Art Land and Water, Kevin Wilson, Sunday Times of Malta, 24 Nov.

Interview with Norbert Francis Attard, Rosemary Strang, www.blinkred.com, Scotland, U.K.

Recent installations in Scotland, England and Malta, Richard Carr,

Sunday Times, Malta, 24 Nov.

Seeing Red, Alison Forrest, Prospect magazine, Nov/Dec issue No.88,

Glasgow, Scotland.

Festival Art reaches an Apex, Richard Carr, Artwork magazine,

Scotland, England, July/August Issue, p.5.

Liverpool Banks on Art, Emma Beatty, The Art Newspaper, England, 27 Sept.

Norbert Francis Attard, Richard Carr, Studio International,

www.studio-international.com London, England, Sept.

Swinging Scousers, Liverpool 1, Holly Johnson, New Statesman magazine, U.K., 14 Oct.

I See Red Everywhere, Edited by Fiona Calder, The Carnyx Group, Glasgow, Scotland.

Foreword by Richard Demarco, Introductory Study by Peter Serracino Inglott.

Contributors: Fiona Calder, Neil Cameron, Richard Carr,

Emmanuel Fiorentino, Quentin Hughes, Paul Sant Cassia, Diane Sykes,

Julian Treuherz, Raphael Vella, Kenneth Wain.

Cityspaces, Raphael Vella, exhibition catalogue, Valletta, Malta. pp.10-11.

2001

The water works, Rosalie Higson, The Weekend Australian Magazine, Dec. Issue.

Boat mirrors balance of nature and threat of man, Anon., Sunshine Coast Daily, Dec.15.

Sculptures take to the water, Glenis Green, The Corier-Mail, 24 October.

Bed of Roses, Emmanuel Fiorentino, The Sunday Times, October 28.

Biennale-Kunstler in Liechtenstein, Eva Jacob, Vorarlberger Nachrichten, Austria, Feb.16.

Art & Finance Video Project, Attard & Briffa in Liechtenstein, Joseph Paul Cassar,

Sunday Times, Malta, March 11.

Taking art into another dimension, Josanne Cassar, Malta Independent, March 10.

Venedig in Vaduz, Ursula Badrutt Scoch, Tagblatt -Beleg-Seite, Austria, Feb.

‘Art & Finance’, Video Performance f’Liechtenstein, George Glanville, L-Orizont Mar. 3,

2000

Diaspora, exhibition catalogue, Ciudad de Oviedo, Spain, 2002, pp. 56-57, 74-75, 152, 191.

Interview ma Norbert Attard, Mario Cassar, In-Nazzjon, Malta, June 4.

Art in Malta Today, exhi. catalogue, St.James, Centre for Creativity, Valletta, Malta. pp. 33, 89.

Contemporary Christian Art in Malta, exh. catalogue, Cathedral Museum, Mdina, Malta.

Inauguration Catalogue, St. James Cavalier, Centre for Creativity, Valletta, Malta.

1999

Re-Interpreting Preti, Theresa M.Vella and Adrian Bartolo, exhibition catalogue,

National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta. pp. 11, 29.

Norbert Attard’s grandiose view of Preti, Emmanuel Fiorentino, Sunday Times, Malta, Jan. 24.

Malta: Norbert Francis Attard, Adrian Bartolo,Venice Biennale catalogue, Italy.

Transcending time and space, Josanne Cassar, The Malta Independent, July 8.

Destination, departure: The Venice Art Biennale, Adrian Bartolo,

The Sunday Times, Malta, July 11, 1999. pp.110-111.

Daniel Mercieca, Artist of the month, www.maltamag.com,

Malta’s on-line magazine, August 5

1998

Temple of Earth: Norbert Attard in Munich, Sunday Times, Malta, March 8.

Tollwood 98, Anon., Artworld magazine, South Korea, August Issue.

The double frustration of painting, Adrian Bartolo, Sunday Times, Malta, Nov.15.

1997

Advanced Graphics London, catalogue, Berkley Square Gallery, London, U.K.1977.

Norbert Attard, architect and painter, Norbert Ellul Vincenti, The Times, Malta, Jan. 18, 1997.

Hier Farben, du Schatten, Hanne Buschmann, Rheinische Post, January 21.

Regen auf Malta fuhrte zur Kunst, Petra Herzog, Zeitung fur Wesel, January 30.

It’s an Or for Norbert Attard, Emmanuel Fiorentino, Sunday Times, Malta, April 27.

Harsa lejn Norbert Attard - l-artist, il-perit u aktar.,Doris Spiteri, In-Nazzjon, Malta, May 2.

Norbert Attard, bidla radikali fl-istil, George Glanville, Ghalik magazin, Malta, May 3.

Sudlich von Sizilien: der Maler Norbert Attard, Ulla Dretzler,

Das Italien-Kulturmagazin, Germany.

Maltese Biographies of the Twentieth Century, M.J.Sciavone and L.J.Scerri., 1997.

1996

The other side of the divide, Kenneth Wain, Exhibition catalogue, Valletta, Malta.

Norbert Attard, Victor Pasmore, Exhibition catalogue, Valletta, Malta.

Norbert Attard, Vintage 96, Emmanuel Fiorentino, Sunday Times, Malta, March 31.

Living among the colours of Paradise, Daphne Caruana Galizia,

High Flyer magazine, Malta, April 1996.

Is- serenenita’ fl-astratt, George Glanville, L-Orizzont, Malta, April 3.

In search of quality, Raphael Vella, The Malta Independent, March 31.

Abstract Experiences, Rose Lapira, The Sunday Times, Malta, March10.

Opening the infinite doors of life, Rose Lapira, Guest magazine, Spring issue.

Wirjiet Imhalta, Adrian Stivala, It-Torca, Il-Hadd magazin, Malta, June 30.

Norbert Attard, The aestheticics of pure form, Dominic Cutajar,

First Sunday magazine, Malta, March 1996.

Paintings 96, Lara Strickland, The Times, Malta, April 3, 1996.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY POST 1977

Epiphanion, exhibition catalogue, Foundation for International Studies, Valletta, Malta. pp.1.

The other side, Theresa Vella, The Sunday Times, Malta, October 20.

Shifting Images of Luminosity, Emmanuel Fiorentino, The Sunday Times, Malta, Oct. 27.

Love at first sight, Raphael Vella, The Malta Independent, October 27.

Norbert Attard, Prints and Paintings, 1977 - 1996, Dennis Vella, (General editor)

Foreword by Kenneth Wain and selected writings by Dennis Vella, Meir Ronnen,

Dominic Cutajar, Anne Musgrave, Richard England, Peter Serracino Inglott,

Raphael Vella, Emmanuel Fiorentino, Rose Lapira and Theresa Vella. Malta.

Hites des sonnen durchgluten Meeres festhalten, Helga Schmalhorst, Hildesheimer

Allegeimeine Zeitung, Germany, November 27.

Norbert Attard...zmien ta’ hidma ntensiva, George Glanville, L-Orizzont, Malta, Nov. 6.

Maltese art in Antwerp, Emmanuel Fiorentino, Sunday Times, Malta, December 8.

Il-kuluri qawwija ta’ Norbert Attard, J.C. Camilleri, In-Nazzjon, Malta, December 13.

Maltese artists in Antwerp art gallery, Anon.,,The Malta Business Weekly, Dec. 19-26.

All in a day, George Cini, Sunday Circle magazine, Malta, December Issue.

Norbert Attard works at Hildesheim Museum, Anon., Sunday Times, Malta, Dec. 22.

Three books on Norbert Attard, L.J.S., Sunday Times, Malta, December 22.

Barometer des Zeitgeistes, Anon., Kunst Aktuell magazin, Germany.

Profile of an artist: Norbert Attard, Anon., We magazine, Malta.

1995

Is-suq, id-dar u l-haxix... Keith P. Grech, L-isudent, Malta, March 1995.

Exporting and importing art, Raphael Vella, Gallerija, The Malta Independent, April 16, 1995.

Norbert Attard in Strasbourg, Emmanuel Fiorentino, The Sunday Times, Malta, April 23, 1995.

Min hu Norbert Attard, J.C. Camilleri, In-Nazzjon, Malta, May 22.

No man is an island, James Catania, Gallerija, The Malta Independent, June 4.

1994

Exhibition with an extra appeal, Emmanuel Fiorentino, Sunday Times, Malta, May 29.

Norbert Attard: artist chameleon, Raphael Vella, The Malta Independent, June 5.

Symphony in acrylics, Pamela Hanson, Sunday Times, Malta, May 22.

Continuity and renewal, Joe Friggieri, Exhibition catalogue, Wands, Valletta, Malta, May 5.

Wirja ta’ Norbert Attard, Tony Degiovanni, L-Orizzont, Malta, July 8.

Artist and Architect, Raphael Vella, Property Update Magazine, Malta.

1992

Paintings of Norbert Attard, Peter Serracino Inglott, Exh. Cat. Gallerija Gaulos, Gozo, Malta.

Norbert Attard at Gallerija Gaulos, Emmanuel Fiorentino, Sunday Times, Malta, July 26.

An artist and an architect, Dominic Cutajar, Inflight magazine, Malta, July Issue.

1991

Maltafest: The state of Maltese Art, Kenneth Wain, The Times, Malta, August 3.

Maltafest’s focus on abstracts, Emmanuel Fiorentino, Sunday Times, Malta, August 4.

Norbert Attard, Emmanuel Fiorentino, Maltafest Exhi.catalogue, Museum of Archaeology, Malta.

1988

The international dictionary of artists who painted Malta, Nicholas De Piro,

Said International Ltd.,Malta.

1986

Norbert Attard, an artist in transition, Richard England, Exh.catalogue, Bridge Street

Gallery, Sydney, Australia,.

Norbert Attard, Richard England, Exh. catalogue, Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta, 1986.

Norbert Attard, Anne Musgrave, Studio magazine, Sydney, Australia, pp.224-225.

Nothing is the matter truthfully, Mark Chipperfield, The Australian, April 16.

Norbert Attard, Ian Findlay, The Times, Prime Time, Hong Kong,.

Norbert Attard tours Australia, Anon.,China and Singapore, Sunday Times, Malta, June 1.

1985

The graphics of Norbert Attard, Dennis Vella, Elegance magazine, Malta.

The graphics of Norbert Attard, Dennis Vella, exh. cat., Bankstown Town Hall, Sydney, Australia.

From Malta to Antibes, Meir Ronnen, Jerusalem Post, Israel.

Contemporary Maltese Artists, Adrian Stivala, North Star Publications, Malta.

1984

The Graphics of Norbert Attard, Peter Serracino Inglott, (unpublished).

Retrospectively lithographic, Emmanuel Fiorentino, The Sunday Times, Malta, January 1.

A multi-faceted Personality, Dominic Cutajar, The Times, Malta, January 10.

The many faces of Art, Adrian Stivala, Weekend Chronicle, Malta, August 18.

1983

Norbert Attard, artist in Malta, 1977-1983, Dominic Cutajar, Malta.

Norbert Attard, artist in Malta 1977-1983, Foreword by Richard England, Malta.

2nd. Exhibition of International Graphics,, Dominic Cutajar, The Times, Malta, May 24.

Arti grafika internazzjonali fil-Gallerija Fenici, Adrian Stivala, L-Orizzont, Malta, May 7.

The Art of Attard, Rose Lapira, Weekend Chronicle, Malta, December 31.

1982

Wirja ta’ l-Arti Grafika fil-Gallerija Fenici, Godwin Scerri, Il-Mument, Malta.

Appraising Maltese graphic art in Malta, Dominic Cutajar, exhibition catalogue,

Maltese graphics I, Galerija Fenici, Valletta, Malta.

Grafiek von Malta, KvB., Dagblad Tubantia, Enschede, Holland, February 16.

Maltese Graphics, Rose Lapira, Weekend Chronicle, Malta, March 6.

Current graphic art in Malta, Dominic Cutajar, The Times, Malta, March 18.

A brief synthesis of Maltese graphics, Emmanuel Fiorentino, Sunday Times, Malta, March 21.

Wirja fil-Verdala mtellgha mill-Gallerija Fenici, Adrian Stivala, In-Taghna, Malta, April 23.

Wirja ta’artist Malti fi Sqallija, Adrian Stivala, L-Orizzont, Malta, May 31.

A.A.M., Grafika Maltija, It-Torca.

1981

International graphics at Gallerija Fenici, Dominic Cutajar, The Times, Malta, May 20.

A retrospective exhibition at Gallerija Fenici, Dominic Cutajar, The Times , Malta, August 5.

A Gallerija Fenici review of contemporary Landscape painting in Malta,

Dominic Cutajar, The Times, Malta, 23rd October.

Gallerija Fenici - a new art centre for Malta, Dominic Cutajar, Atrium magazine, No.1, Malta,

The native environment, Rose Lapira, Weekend Chronicle, Malta, November 7.

Maltese Landscapes, E.V. Borg, The Sunday Times, Malta, November 29.

Maltese Landscape, Dominic Cutajar, Exh.catalogue, Gallerija Fenici, Valletta, Malta.

1980

This is Malta: Images in Art, England Richard, Mid-Med Bank, Malta.

Norbert Attard, Rob Sanders, Kunstjournal, Einhoven Dagblad, Holland, February 13.

A happy moment in Maltese Art, Dominic Cutajar, The Times, Malta, July 4.

The Bastions, poem by Caesar Attard, (unpublished), July 13.

Over Malta en Attard, Joh. Jansen, exhibition catalogue, Philips Ontspannings

Centrum, Eindhoven, Holland.

The Myth of control and the logic of non-communication: some observations on the

Maltese pictorial arts, Paul Sant Cassia, Illum, Malta, May/June Issue.

Der Maler der Mauren von Malta, Dieter Lohl, exhibition catalogue, ‘’Walls of Malta’’,

Meistersuite Europaischer, Graphik, Germany.

Norbert Attard, The Graphics of Feng-Shui, Richard England, (1979),

Uncaged Reflections, by Richard England, Malta.

Driscoll and his art of illumination, Dominic Cutajar, The Times, Malta, November 10.

Art fiesta at Gallerija Fenici, Dominic Cutajar, The Times, Malta, December.

1979

Norbert Attard, Richard England, exh. catalogue, Graphiksammlung Dieter Lohl, Germany.

The fantasy of a graphic artist, Dominic Cutajar, The Times, Malta, February 13.

Norbert Attard, Dieter Lohl, exhibition catalogue, Graphiksammlung Dieter Lohl, Germany.

Norbert Attard, Dieter Lohl, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Sohle 1, Berkamen, Germany.

Konkrete Formen in zarten, Linien und dezenten Farben, Georg Muller,

Stolberger Nachrichten, Germany, May 10.

Impressionen von der Insel Malta, Marie Hullenkremer, Stolberger Nachrichten, Germany.

Display of contemporary art, Dominic Cutajar, The Times, Malta, January 29.

Perfection in technique, Emmanuel Fiorentino, The Sunday Times, Malta, February 18.

N.orbert Attard fil-Muzew ta’ l-Arti, J. B.G., It-Torca, Malta, February 25.

Trois Artistes venus du Sud, S.R., La Libre Belgique, Belgium, April 6.

Maltese artist on tour in W. Germany, Victor Fenech, The Times, Malta, April 17.

Norbert Attard...Inventur de L’Ille de Malte, Alain Viray, La Derniere Heure, Belgium, April 23.

1978

Norbert Attard u l-Imdina, poem by Giuseppi Schembri,, L-Orizzont, Malta, January 13.

A magnificent art display at the Verdala, Dominic Cutajar, Malta News, February 21.

15 artists at Migrant’s House, Emmanuel Fiorentino, The Sunday Times, Malta, April 9.

15 Artists, Dominic Cutajar, The Democrat, Malta, May.

Die strege Inselwelt Maltas, E. B., Kolner Rundschau, Germany, June 30.

Kraftig plakativ, S. K., Kolner Stadtanzeiger, Koln, Germany, July 14.

Babylon in Kleinformat, Jn,, Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Dotmund, Germany, Aug.24.

Maltas Mauern und das Meer, Westfalische Rundshau Dortmunder Feuilleton,

Germany, August 26.

Liebe zur Heimat pragt seine Werke, Regina Winnerl, Kreiszeitung Grafschaft Hoya,

Germany, October 19.

1977

Annelie Pohlen, Malta: Morgen- und Abendland, General Anzeiger, March 18.

Emmanuel Fiorentino, New hopes for Maltese Art, The Sunday Times (Malta), Jan. 23.

Paul Xuereb, Bronze colossus, The Sunday Times (Malta), August 21.

Anon., Blumengrusse aus Malta, Kolnerstadt Anzeiger, October 13.

121

SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATIONS & PROJECTS

VIDEO / SLIDE / PHOTOGRAPHY INSTALLATIONS & PROJECTS

ART IN NATURE PROJECTS

SCULPTURE / SCULPTURE INSTALLATIONS

COMMUNITY-BASED PROJECTS

SELECTED CHRONOLOGY WORKS & PROJECTS 1998 - 2007

INTERVENTION I 12 colours of emulsion paint. Curated by Paul Gilby. Lister’s Mills, Bradford, England, 2003.

SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATIONS & PROJECTS

PARADISE LOST AND REGAINEDInterventions in the Landscape: Paradise Revealed, Curated by Christine Gist. Organised by St. Margaret’s Bay Trust. Pines Gardens, St. Margaret’s Bay (Dover), Kent, U.K., 2007.

ALBURY CANTATAEleven video projections.Commissioned by Albury Regional Gallery.Curated by Kevin Wilson.Albury Library Museum, Albury, N.S.W., Australia, 2007.

TURN. TO COLOUR51 colours, programmed LED and theatre lights.Commissioned by Turner Contemporary, U.K.Curated by Miria Swain.Margate Pier, Margate, U.K., 2007.

ORIGINAL SINApples, Grass and pick-up van.Europos Parkas, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2006.

MAGNETIC CHEMISTRYGalvanized steel plates, magnetized labels with textOrganized by the Committee for Expo Science 2006,University of Malta, Tal-Qroqq, Malta, 2006.

SKYLIGHTSkylight with Carpets, bedspread and blankets.Gozo Contemporary, Gozo, Malta, 2006.

ELISABETH; OR TO BE A MANNMusic by Charles Camilleri. Libretto by Peter Serracino Inglott. Organised by Fondation de Malte in collaboration with International Ocean Institute. Stage Direction by Mario Frendo. Produced by Davinia Galea and Mario Frendo. Stage Design and Art Direction by Norbert Francis Attard.Valletta Waterfront, Malta, 2005.

ZEN GARDEN Marble chippings, Maltese limestone, 2 light fittings, Blitz, curated by Raphael Vella. Malta at War Museum, Vittoriosa, Malta, 2005.

GOLDEN SUDACHI12, 000 Sudachi (Japanese limes), wood, green stain, and 4 lights with green gel.Organised by K.A.I.R.Kamiyama, Tokushima Prefecture, Japan.Kamiyama Jose High School, Kamiyama, Japan, 2004.

EARTH MOTHEROver-sized wooden beads found in shrine.Organised by K.A.I.R., Kamiyama, Tokushima Prefecture, Japan. Kami Ichinomiya Oawa Shrine, Kamiyama, Japan, 2004.

CYCLEDigital photo, P.V.C. membrane, dry leaves,water, 2 halogen lights, fiberglass legs.Organised by Wifredo Lam Foundation, Havana, Cuba.Directed by Hilda Maria Rodriguez. Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabana, 8th Havana Biennale, Havana, Cuba, 2003.

PATH TO TRANSCENDENCE20-foot container, printed fabric, upholstered table and five chairs, mirrored perspex, light.The Paths to Europe, Curated by Dimitri Konstantinidis & Monika Sielska. Organised by APPOLONIA/Strasbourg and ARTBOX/Thessaloniki; Macedonia Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2003.

CONTAINER 21ST.C.40 foot container, 2 pumps, pvc pipes, water, water-proofing membrane, silver paint, light.Post-Civilisation, curated by Lee Jiun-shyan, Huang Hai-ming and Chang Hsin-pi. Organised by Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival,Ocean Terminal, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2003.

SALINA’S LAMENTRe-assembled existing structure found on premises, PVC membrane, water.Light, 500W sub-woofer, 4 speakers, 2 CD player, 2 amplifiers.Music by Ian Boddy. Poem by Mario Azzopardi.Borders, curated by START and Richard Davies.Pinto Wharf Stores, Valletta, Malta, 2003.

MAGNET IThree kilometres of pink string, metal.Organised by Relative Media, England.In collaboration with Alison Breeze, Art Apartment Gallery. Curated by Paul Gilby. Festival of Entertainment & Visual Arts, Knaresbourgh. Facade of Art Apartment Gallery, Knaresbourgh, U.K., 2003.

PALESTRINA AND HELL Scaffolding, PVC membrane, water, 4 speakers, 8 sub-woofers, 2 CD players, lights, 2 skeletons. Electronic music by Ian Boddy.Curated by Eva Jacob. Johanniterkirche, Feldkirch, Austria, 2003.

INTERVENTION I Twelve colours of emulsion paint. Organised by Relative Media, U.K. In collaboration with Urban Splash, Liverpool, U.K. Curated by Paul Gilby. Lister’s Mills, Bradford, England, 2003.

I SEE RED EVERYWHERE100m red fabric, dead tree.Uber, Group show of fourteen artists. Curated by Mark Mangion.Portomaso, Malta, 2002.

GREY IS HARD TO FINDGlass coffin, grey fabric, compost soil, laptop computer, video, light.Uber, Group show of fourteen artists, Curated by Mark Mangion.Portomaso, Malta, 2002.

BEYOND CONFLICTRed and green fabric.Organised by Relative Media, England.In collaboration with afoundation, Liverpool, U.K.Curated by Mike Hurst. The Oratory, Liverpool Anglican Cathedral. 2nd Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, England, 2002.

LOVE IS ALL THERE ISText on transparent plastic sheets, light.Curated by The Demarco European Art Foundation, Edinburgh, Scotland.Apex Internanational Hotel, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2002.

TU ES PETRUS I Polystyrene sculpture, fabric, paint.Organised by Relative Media, England.In collaboration with Urban Splash, Liverpool, U.K.Curated by Bill Maynard.St.Peters Church, Liverpool, England, 2002.

TU ES PETRUS IIPolystyrene sculpture, fabric, paintOrganised by Relative Media, England.In collaboration with Urban Splash, Liverpool, U.K.Curated by Bill Maynard.St.Peters Church, Liverpool, England, 2002.

A PLACE CALLED PARADISE ISand, text by Alain de Botton, umbrella, deck chair, bucket, sink, motorized pump, coloured water.Organised by START and YMCA, Valletta, Malta.Cityspaces, curated by Raphael Vella.78, Old Mint Street, Valletta, Malta, 2002.

THE LAST SUPPER IRed fabric, knives, forks, glasses, wine, cgarette ends.St. Peter’s Cemetry, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2002.

A PLACE CALLED PARADISE II100 red towels, golden pegs.Organised by START and YMCA, Valletta, Malta.Cityspaces, curated by Raphael Vella.78, Old Mint Street, Valletta, Malta, 2002.

VIRGIN VALLEYManequin, wedding dress, dry branches, white paint, ultraviolet light, red light.Curated by David Darmanin. D-Klub, Rabat, Gozo, Malta, 2002.

ORA PRO NOBISVideo projector, monitor, 2 SVHS players, 1000 pair of shoes.3rd Biennale of Christian Art, Curated by Mgr. Vincent. Borg.Cathedral Museum, Mdina, Malta, 2000.

ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHERMosquito nets, glass eyes, plastic, spray, cork, six electric fans, light.Organised by Frequenzen Group, Germany.National Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta, 1998.

VIDEO / SLIDE / PHOTOGRAPHY INSTALLATIONS

ONLYTwo Photographs.Artifecture, Curated by Vince Briffa. Organised by START, Malta.Malta Today newspaper, 2007.

CUT LOOSEVideo, 2006.Move Me, Video Channel 2007, Curated by Wilfried de Agricola Cologne. Germany, 2007.

FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITYMoving Slide ProjectionOrganised by START, Malta and Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna, Malta.Blitz, curated by Raphael Vella. Malta at War Museum, Vittoriosa, Malta, 2005.

RE: CYCLEProjected DVD, Monitor with DVD, Sofa, P.V.C. membrane, Water, Lights.The Exhausted Body, curated by Nina Dimitriadi.Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2005.

I MISS MY LUGGAGEFour colour poster and series of photographsUnclaimed luggage 2004, Curated by Litza Antoniou, Melita Couta, and Michael Panayiotis. Organised by Artrageous Group, Nicosia, Cyprus. Circulo de Bellas Arte, Madrid, Spain, 2005.

LOSSVideo, 2005.Video Dictionary, Barcelona, Spain, 2005.

±1.618034Video, 2005.Inspiration of Astronomical Phenomena, International Currents Gallery, John David Mooney Foundation, Chicago, U.S.A, 2005.

METAWARPHOSESVideo Animation, 2005.Flag Metamorphoses,Concept by and in collaboration with Myriam Thyes.

THE SIGNVideo: Obsession, 2005.Obsession, Curated by Gulsun Erbil and Sinasi Gunes. The International Video Festival, Galerie X, Istanbul, Turkey, 2005.

TERRORISTS HAVE WONBanner and photos.Artists against Sedition Laws, Curated by Nicholas Tsoutas.Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, Australia, 2005.

SPARTICLE SERIES I, II. III. AND IVPhoto sessions of students from Jose High School, Kamiyama.Organised by K.A.I.R., Kamiyama, Tokushima Prefecture, Japan.Assembled photographs created in studio in Gozo, Malta, 2005.

GEOGRAPHYSix calligraphic ink drawings on Korean paper. Poems by Maria Grech Ganado.The World Calligraphy Biennale of Jeollabuk, Curated by Yoon Yin Sup. Sori Arts Centre, South Korea, 2005.

DOUBLE SPIRALSlippers, rice, sudachi, dry leaves, 5 lights,a-oishi stone, 2 projectors, 2 laptop computers.Organised by K.A.I.R., Kamiyama, Tokushima Prefecture, Japan.Kamiyama Jose High School, Tatami, Kamiyama, Japan, 2004.

FOOTNOTEIn collaboration with Chris Pace. Text by Stanley Borg.Digitally photography on 32 panels 60cm x 240cm.Olympic Games of the Visual Arts, Curated by Tereza de Arruda Organised by Artiade Foundation, Berlin, Germany.19 Petru Ralli Street, Athens, Greece, 2004.

OLYMPIC KISSIn collaboration with Chris Pace.Digitally printed photography on 32 panels 60cm x 240cm. Text by Stanley Borg.Olympic Games of the visual Arts, curated by Tereza de Arruda.Organised by Artiade Foundation, Berlin, Germany.Petru Ralli Street, 19, Athens, Greece, 2004.

SEMITIC- ROMANCE POLARISATIONPhotographswww.transeuropa, curated by Elisabeth HaasKulturverband Favoriten, Vienna, Austria, 2004.

AND SMUFF2603Three video projectors, three DVD players, viewing room with perspex front.In collaboration with Mark Mangion.Borders, curated by START and Richard Davies.Pinto Wharf, Pinto Stores, Valletta, Malta, 2003.

SEA OF TRANSCENDENCETwo Digitally printed laminated photographs, 2.4m x 4m.Organised by Blink Red, Edinburgh, Scotland. Apex International Hotel, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2003.

THE ZEALOT I Photograph on perspex, wood, light.Escape, curated by Austin Camilleri.Old Prisons at the Cittadella, Victoria, Gozo, Malta, 2003.

HOUSE OF CARDS20 digitally printed photographs, foamboard.‘Blueprint Faker & Citadel Makers’ (A-Z of Virtual Municipality), Curated by Mike Dawson.Debenhams Windows, Manchester, U.K., 2003.

THE ZEALOT IIPrinted photograph, 2m x 2.6m.Organised by Wifredo Lam Foundation, Havana, Cuba.Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabana, 8th Havana Biennale, Havana, Cuba, 2003.

ARE YOU LOOKING AT MERITES OF PASSAGE LARGER THAN LIFEThree video projections, 2000. Organised by Hypo Bank, Vaduz, Liechtenstein.Curated by Eva Jacob.Video Projection in Main Square, Vaduz, Liechtenstein, 2001.

ART IN NATURE PROJECTS

ABLUTIONFloating apples in existing pond.Europos Parkas, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2006.

±1.618034Concrete, water, black paint.Organised by K.A.I.R., Kamiyama, Tokushima Prefecture, Japan.Souzou no mori, Fureai Park, Kamiyama, Japan, 2004.

BLUESTONE RIVERA-oishi stone, stone chippings, sand.Organised by K.A.I.R., Kamiyama, Tokushima Prefecture, JapanKamiyama Stone Factory, Kamiyama, Japan, 2004.

EARTH GALAXYCanals formed by the existing pebbles.Organised by K.A.I.R., Kamiyama, Tokushima Prefecture, Japan.River Akui, Kamiyama, Japan, 2004.

BALANCEMirrored perspex, wood, branches.The Floating Land, International Site Specific Art Laboratory, Curated by Kevin Wilson. Organised by Noosa Regional Gallery.Wejba Creek, Noosa, Queensland, Australia, 2001.

GLASSHOUSE MOUNTAINSBamboo, lava stones, branches, rope.Sticks and Stones, curated by Penny Smith.Woodford Festival, Woodford, Queensland, Australia, 2001.

SCULPTURE / SCULPTURE INSTALLATIONS

GLOBALIZATIONTwo keyboards. Gozo contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2006.

BETWEEN EARTH AND HEAVENWooden sculpture, string and mirror.Olympic Landscape Sculpture international.Exhibition visiting Beijing, Tianjin, Xiamen, Nanning, Zhengzhou, Changchun, Taiyuan, Shijiazhuang, Ningbo, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Macao, China, 2006-2007.

TELESCOPEStainlkess steel sculpture, 2006.22nd Ube Sculpture Triennale (2007), Japan.

SWING IOne swing: Aluminium casts of two adjoining hand guns, pair of chains.Blitz, curated by Raphael Vella, Malta at War Museum, Vittoriosa, Malta, 2005.

SWING II3 swings: Aluminium casts of 2 adjoining hand guns, pair of chains.100 Artists for a Museum, Curated by Antonio ManfrediCasoria Museum of Contemporary Art, Naples, Italy, 2005.

THE GAMETable, 2 chairs, sandblasted glass, 24 indian andcowboy statues, red and blue spray paint, lights.Blitz, curated by Raphael Vella.Organised by START, Malta and Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna, Malta.Malta at War Museum, Vittoriosa, Malta, 2005.

MAKE A WISHStained wooden box, photo of the sea, mirror, ceramic plate, coins.Nomadifesta 2004, curated by Litza Antoniou, Melita Couta, and Michael Panayiotis. Organised by Artrageous Group, Nicosia, Cyprus. Kastelliotossa, Nicosia, Cyprus, 2004.

A BIT OF BOAT In collaboration with John Fuller.7 sculptures, 9mm. marine plywood, stainless steel wire, glue, screws.Olympic Games of the Visual Arts, Curated by Tereza de Arruda.Organised by Artiade Foundation,Berlin,Germany.Petru Ralli Street, Athens, Greece, 2004.

BOAT RACEIn collaboration with John Fuller.6 sheets x 240cm x 120cm, 16mm. marine plywood.Olympic Games of the Visual Arts,Curated by Tereza de Arruda.Organised by Artiade Foundation, Berlin, Germany.Petru Ralli Street, Athens, Greece, 2004.

COMMUNITY-BASED PROJECTS

VELLA FAMILYPhotographs of six members of the Maltese family VELLA, Installation with objects from their house. GOZO Contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, 2006.

INVENTORY OF THE INTIMATE: TOKAMACHI Corrugated p.v.c., metal sheets, timber, metal studs, plastic granules, ready-found objects, cloths hangers, sound, lights.Collaboration with the Higashi-Karekimata Community.Kaijimaya Shop, Nigata Prefecture, Tokamachi.Organised by Front Art Gallery, Tokyo. Directed by Fram Kitagawa.3rd Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale, Japan, 2006.

R-EVOLUTIONPhotographs and video.In collaboration with Maria Rebecca Ballestra.Performance with 100 students from MCAST Art and Design Institute, Mosta, Malta. Greek Theatre, Mosta, Malta, 2006.

INVENTORY OF THE INTIMATE: TAIPEI Photographs,video and book.Artist’s Diary: Intervene, Curated by Ashley Chang. Taipei Artist Village, Taipei, Taiwan, 2005.

SACRED GEOMETRYWorkshop with 24 students.Organised by K.A.I.R., Kamiyama, Tokushima Prefecture, Japan.Kamiyama Jose High School, Gym, Kamiyama, Japan, 2004.

FOOD CYCLEBrown and white rice, crackers, beans, baked rice, 24 ceramic containers, 2 round tables.Organised by K.A.I.R., Kamiyama, Tokushima Pref., Japan.Kaizen Centre, Kamiyama, Japan, 2004.

ONE EXTREME TO ANOTHERWhite fabric, red spray, table, chair,computer keyboard, 2 Sycamore trees.Curated by Donna Rae.Gardens of St.Leonards School, St. Andrews, Scotland, 2002.

THE BEAMING MARTYRPhotograph, 2003.Self Portrait–A Show for Bethlehem, Curated by Wilfried de Agricola Cologne; Bethlehem International Center, Palestine; Casoria Museum of Contemporary Art Naples, Italy; Museo Arte Contemporaneo Santa Fe, Argentina; MACRO - Museo Arte Contemporaneo Rosario, Argentina; Officyna Art Space Szczecin, Poland; Museum of Swinoujcie, Poland, 2006.

BACK TO BABEL2 video projectors, 2 VHS players, newspapers, nylon string, light and one book.Art in Malta Today, curated by Joseph Paul Cassar.St. James Cavalier, Centre for Creativity, Valletta, Malta, 2000.

LARGER THAN LIFE I9 slide projectors, 5m.high motorized pendulum,monitor, VHS player.Re-Interpreting Preti, curated by Dominic Cutajar, Adrian Bartolo and Theresa M.Vella. Organised by the National Museum of Fine Arts.St.James Cavalier, Valletta, Malta, 1999.

LARGER THAN LIFE II4m. high motorized pendulum, monitor, video projector, 2 VHS video players.Larger than Life II, Curated by Adrian Bartolo.48th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, 1999.

RITES OF PASSAGEVideo Projection. Music by Ruben Zahra. Millenium Celebrations 31st December 1999.Curated by Peter Serracino Inglott.Entrance door of Auberge de Castille, Valletta, Malta, 1999.

WHAT IF BEUYS CAME HERE.Video projector, VHS player, wooden frame, plastic sheet, limestone sculptures. From Hagar Qim to the ring of Brodgar, Organized by the Demarco European Foundation, Edinburgh, Scotland. National Martime Museum, Vittoriosa, Malta, 1999.

BRIDGEBamboo, rope.Sticks and Stones, curated by Penny Smith.Woodford Festival, Woodford, Queensland, Australia, 2001.

NESTWood, Branches, rope, sign.Sticks and Stones, curated by Penny Smith.Woodford Festival, Woodford, Queensland, Australia, 2001.

BREATH OF MINDWood, Korean ropeBreath, Curated by Park Byoung Uk3rd International Art and Environmental Symposium, Taechon Lake, Chonju, South Korea, 1998.

EARTH TEMPLETimber logs, earth, pebbles.Transkutan, curated by Ludwig Frank.Tollwood Festival, Olympia Park, Munich, Germany, 1998.

SPLITCollaboration with Sumer Erek and performer Karolina Spyrou.String, performer, hollow metal tube sections (structure 2.4m x 1.5m x 2m).GOZO contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2003.

MAGNET IIHollow section metal tube 2.4m x 1m x 1.2m, string.Collaboration with Sumer Erek.GOZO contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2003.

THE LAST SUPPER IICardboard box, four plates, knives, forks, 4 glasses of wine, cigarette ends.Gozo Contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2002.

TATOOSculpture, Maltese limestone.GOZO contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2002.

ONLY ONE BORDER Sculpture, Doll head and photocopied map of the world.GO ZO Contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2001.

MUSICAL CHAIRSSeven Swedish pine chairs.GOZO contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2001.

TWELVE DIALOGUES28 Swedish pine chairs.Caruana Timber Stores, Xewkija, Gozo, Malta, 2001.

MLP LOVES PN AND PN LOVES MLPMaltese limestone.GOZO contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2001.

Twenty -five years / 25 artists, Curated by Dennis Vella.Middle Sea House, Floriana, Malta, 2006.

CARAVAGGIO I Pillows, paint., knives, 10mm glass, wood, wheels.GOZO contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2001.

CARAVAGGIO III0 sandblasted mirrors, wood, fluorescent paint.GOZO contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2001.

CARAVAGGIO I & IICaravaggio Exhibition, Organised by the Carravaggio Foundation, Malta, Vittoriosa Malta, 2004.

BED OF ROSES8 beds, artificial roses, text.GOZO contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2001.

One bed, artificial roses, text.Organised by Blink Red, Edinburgh, Scotland. Apex International Hotel, Grassmarket, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2003.

FIRST EUROPEAN UNIONSculpture, Maltese limestone.GOZO contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2001.

RESURRECTION IGlass coffin, white fabric, pearls, lava stones.GOZO Contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2000.

RESURRECTION IIMirrored coffin, fluorescent paint.GOZO contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2001.

HISTORYSculpture, Maltese limestone.GOZO contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2001.

TEMPTATIONSSculpture, Dead tree, ladies handbags.GOZO contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2001.

42 – 50Sculpture, Seven stainless steel ladles, beans.GOZO Contemorary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2000.

CLONE10 sandlasted mirrored panels.GOZO contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2000.

SEVEN SACRED JOURNEYSMaltese woven rug, Maltese limestone, wood, wax, leaves, herbs, metal, rope.Organised by The Demarco International Art Foundation, Edinburgh, Scotland. Matthew Gallery, Edinburgh International Festival, Scotland, 1999.

TOLERANCE OF AMBIGUITYBricks, wooden plank, metal pin, plaster.Diaspora International Art Meeting,Curated by Javier Baron, Orlando Britto Jinorio, Luciano Escanilla, Anke Mellin, Andres Pereiro, and Cuco Suarez.Ciudad de Oviedo, Spain, 1999.

CAMPS OF DISPLACEMENTThree stainless steel ladles, handmade doll, beans, glass eyes, metal and wiood, plastic sheet.2nd Biennale di Firenze, Florence, Italy, 1999.

TURN. TO COLOUR 51 colours and LED lighting, Commissioned by Turner Contemporary, U.K. Curated by Miriia Swain. Margate Pier, Margate, U.K., 2007.

ALBURY CANTATA 11 back-projected videos. Commissioned by Albury City Council, Directed by Kevin Wilson, Albury Library Museum, Albury, N.S.W. Queensland, Australia, 2007.

CONTAINER 21ST.C. 40 foot silvered container, seawater, 2 pumps. Post-Civilisation, Curated by Lee Jiun-shyan, Huang Hai-ming and Chang Hsin-pi. Ocean Terminal, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2003.

PALESTRINA AND HELL Water, timber platform, PVC, 8 sub-woofers. Music by Ian Boddy. Curated by Eva Jacob. Johanniterkirche, Feldkirch, Austria, 2003.

SALINA’S LAMENT Water, PVC, timber and glass partitions, one sub-woofer. Music by Ian Boddy. Borders, Curated by START and Richard Davies. Pinto Wharf, Stores, Valeeta, Malta, 2003.

CYCLE Photograph, water, PVC, dry autumn leaves. Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabana, 8th Havana Biennale, Havana, Cuba, 2003.

RE: CYCLE Video projection, monitor with video, water, PVC, sofa. Exhausted Body, Curated by Nina Dimitriadi, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2005.

THE ZEALOT I Back-lit photograph. Escape, Curated by Austin Camilleri, Old Prisons, Cittadella, Victoria, Gozo, Malta, 2003.

LARGER THAN LIFE II 4m. high motorized pendulum, monitor, video projector.Curated by Adrian Bartolo. 48th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy,1999.

LARGER THAN LIFE I 9 slide projectors, 5m high motorized pendulum, monitor with video, battery torches, candles. Re-Interpreting Preti, Curated by Dominic Cutajar, Adrian Bartolo and Theresa M. Vella. St.James Cavalier, Valletta, Malta,1999.

BEYOND CONFLICT Red and green fabric. Curated by Mike Hurst, The Oratory, Liverpool Anglican Cathedral. 2nd Liverpool Biennial, England, 2002.

I SEE RED EVERYWHERE Dead tree and red fabric. Uber, Curated by Mark Mangion, Portomaso, Malta, 2002.

TU ES PETRUS I Painted polystyrene sculpture, red fabric.St.Peters Church, Liverpool, England, 2002.

139

BED OF ROSESEight beds, text, red artificial roses. Gozo Contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta. 2001.

CARAVAGGIO I 24 pillows and knives, wooden frame, glass, 4 casters. 2001.

ZEN GARDEN Maltese globigerina limestone bombs and stone chippings. Blitz, Curated by Raphael Vella, Malta at War Museum, Vittoriosa, Malta, 2005.

MLP LOVES PN AND PN LOVES MLP Maltese globigerina limestone, 2001

BACK TO BABEL 2 video projections, book, newspapers, nylon, light. .Art in Malta Today, Curated by Joseph Paul Cassar, St. James Cavalier, Center for Creativity, Valletta, Malta, 2000.

RESURRECTION I 10mm thick glass coffin, pearls, white fabric. Gozo Contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2001.

GREY IS HARD TO FIND 10mm thick glass coffin, laptop with video, grey fabric, compost. Uber, Curated by Mark Mangion, Portomaso, Malta, 2002.

BOAT RACE In collaboration with John Fuller. 6 sheets of 16mm. marine plywood. Olympic Games of the Visual Arts, Athens, Greece, 2004.

SPLIT In collaboaration with Sumer Erek. String, hollow metal sections and model. Gozo Contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2003.

BALANCE Mirrored perspex boat, layer of branches on the bottom. The Floating Land, International Site Specific Art Laboratory, Curated by Kevin Wilson. Wejba Creek, Noosa, Queensland, Australia, 2001.

147 ABLUTION and ORIGINAL SIN Europos Parkas, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2006.

BREATH OF MIND Breath, Curated by Park Byoung Uk, Taechon Lake, Chonju, South Korea, 1998.

TWELVE DIALOGUES 26 Swedish pine chairs. Caruana Timber Stores, Xewkija, Gozo, Malta, 2001.

A BIT OF BOAT In collaboration with John Fuller. 7 plywood sculptures. Olympic Games of the Visual Arts, Curated by Teresa de Arruda. Athens, Greece, 2004.

TOLERANCE OF AMBIGUITY Diaspora, Curated by Javier Baron, Orlando Britto Jinorio, Luciano Escanilla, Anke Mellin, Andres Pereiro, and Cuco Suarez, Oviedo, Spain, 1999.

SWING II 100 Artists for a Museum, Curated by Antonio Manfredi, Casoria Museum of Contemporary Art, Naples, Italy, 2005.

THE GAME Blitz, Curated by Raphael Vella, Malta at War Museum, Vittoriosa, Malta, 2005.

MAGNETIC CHEMISTRY Expo Science, University of Malta, Tal-Qroqq, Malta, 2006.

EARTH TEMPLE Transkutan, Curated by Ludwig Frank, Olympia Park, Munich, Germany, 1998.

A PLACE CALLED PARADISE I Cityspaces, Curated by Raphael Vella, 78, Old Mint Street, Valletta, Malta, 2002

INVENTORY OF THE INTIMATE: TAIPEI Photographs, video, book.Artist’s Diary: Intervene, Curated by Ashley Chang, Taipei Artist Village, Taipei, Taiwan, 2005.

153 VELLA FAMILY Objects, photographs. Gozo Contemporary, Gharb, Gozo, Malta, 2006.

INVENTORY OF THE INTIMATE: TOKAMACHI In collaboration with the Higashi-Karekimata Community. Kaijimaya Shop, Tokamachi, Japan. Directed by Fram Kitagawa. 3rd Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale, Japan, 2006.

THE ARTIST IN KAMIYAMA, JAPAN, 2004 PHOTOGRAPH BY TAKAHIDE KURARA

I have always been interested in ‘place’ and the memory of sites. Perhaps because I was born in an island where the archaeological centres of

historical gravity were megalithic ruins, and some of the oldest freestanding sculptural buildings in the world, and perhaps also because I also

worked as an architect, I have been acutely conscious of the a-neutrality of topoi/places, our awareness of those spaces, and the changing

histories of perception of these places. This includes also my attempt to create balance and harmony through inter-relatedness of contradictory

themes. No location is neutral, and our sense of place is always somewhat shaped by past histories and contemporary ideologies. Consequently,

audiences as viewers and interlocutors are critical to my work. All artists are the product of their cultural environments. In my case the key themes

may perhaps be traced to my cultural roots in Malta, a Catholic/secular island at the edges of Europe and North Africa. Some of the oppositions are

religion(s)/secularism, law versus justice, the relationship between land and sea, polarization of political parties, the attachments to (often ephemeral)

things as emotional anchors, inside versus outside, public/private, the separation and opposition of the senses and their fusing through the (Maltese)

festa, etc. – in short the exhausting engagement of dualities.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

157

AOMI OKABE was born in Japan, graduating in Museums Studies in modern and contemporary art history at the Ecole du Louvre, Paris, France and at the Sorbonne

University IV, in 1986. She is presently Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan, since 1999. She is Art adviser to Shiseido

Art Gallery in Tokyo and Ohara Art Museum in Kurashiki, since 2005 and 2002 respectively. Since 2005, she has been a member of the Selection Committee of Japan

Foundation for Commissioners on Biennials and Triennials in Japan. Aomi Okabe has also had several curatorial experiences. She is the sole author of a number of

books namely: Contemporary Art and Art Space in Japan - Realities through Museum Studies-, Tokyo, Musashino Art University Press, 2005; Art, Women, Image, Tokyo,

Saikisha, 2003; History of Pompidou Center, Tokyo, Kinokuniya Publisher, 1997; Art Seed-Art Documentary Films on Pompidou Center Collection, Tokyo, Libroport, 1993;

The Place of Art -French Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Skydoor, 1992. She has also written numerous articles for art journals including International Magazines: Paradoxa

(Chiharu Shiota, 2006) and Flash Art (Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, 2003).

DANIEL CILIA was born in Gozo, in 1963. Cilia held exhibitions in Malta, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, the Czech Republic, Canada, Australia, and

the USA. His work has been published in several magazines in Europe, Japan, and the USA. In 1995 his photography was used to create a multi-vision production

entitled Gozo 360°, Island of Joy. Cilia’s photographic studies on the island of Malta have appeared in the books; Gozo, a Photographic Guide, Images of Malta

– with Eddie Aquilina (1990), Legacy in Stone (1993), Gozo and Comino 360° (with Attilio Bocazzi-Varotto, 1994); Melit et Gaul (1995), and the trilogy dedicated to the

fortified cities of Malta, Valletta (1997), Mdina (1998), and The Three Cities (1998); The Temple of the Knights of Malta (2000); Influence and Patronage, (2001); The

Sovereign Palaces of Malta, (2002); Malta, Prehistory and Temples (2002); Malta, the Baroque Island (2003); Malta 360° (with Enrico Formica) (2003); Malta before

History, (2004); The Archaeological Drawings of C.F. de Brocktorff, (2004). In 2005 his photography featured in the following books: Malta: Phoenician, Punic and

Roman; Inside Malta & Gozo; Restauri e Riscoperte di Scultura del Barocco Romano a Malta; Le Monache Gerosololimitane; Malta: War & Peace; Cronologia de

i Gran Maestri dello Spedale della Sacra Reglione Militare di S. Gio. Gerosolimitano e dell’ Ordine del Santo Sepolcro oggi detti di Malta.

RICHARD ENGLAND was born in Malta and graduated in Architecture at the University of Malta. He continued his studies in Italy at the Milan Polytechnic and

also worked as a student-architect in the studio of the Italian architect-designer Gio Ponti. He is also a sculptor, photographer, poet and artist. He is the author

of several books on both art and architecture, and a number of monographs have been published on his work. Richard England holds professorships at various

universities in the U.S.A, U.K. and Europe (Visiting Professor (Honoris Causa) at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Honorary Fellow at the University of

Bath, England and an Academician at the International Academy of Architecture and also a Professor (Honoris Causa) at the Institute of Advanced Studies at

the University of New York, U.S.A. In 1993 The Government of Malta appointed him Officer of The Order of Merit. His buildings and designs have earned him

numerous International prizes and Awards. Among his best known buildings in Malta are the Church of St Joseph at Manikata, the Central Bank of Malta Annexe,

the Millennium Chapel and the St. James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Valletta. Richard England has worked in the capacity of Architectural Consultant to

governmental and private institutions in the following countries:- Yugoslavia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Italy, Argentina, Poland, Bulgaria, the Ex-Soviet Union, and his

native Malta. He has followed and written about Norbert Francis Attard’s work since the mid-seventies.

SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF CONTRIBUTORS

158

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MASAKI MORI

TORU NAKAHARA

MASAHITO HARA

KIYOSHI IWAMARU

KAZHIRO KAWANO

YASUNOBU AIHARA

KUNIKO AIHARA

YOICHI AMANO

KYOKO AMANO

MASASHIGE KUSUNOKI

IKUYO MAENOHIROKO SENDA

YATOSHI KAWAGUCHI

MINAKO AIHARA

HITOMI KUROCHI

HISAKO YOSHIDA

PRESS

MASAHIDE TOMONARI

159 THE ARTIST IN A LIMESTONE QUARRY, GOZO, 2006 PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL GILBY

THE ARTIST EXTENDS HIS THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING

RICHARD ENGLAND

DANIEL CILIA

RANIER FSADNI

LISA GWEN BALDACCHINO

AOMI OKABE

PAUL SANT CASSIA

DR. FRANCIS ZAMMIT DIMECH - MINISTER OF TOURISM AND CULTURE

DR. MARIO TABONE - CHAIRMAN OF HERITAGE MALTA

ANTOINETTE CARUANA, PIERRE CASSAR, ROSELLA SCHEMBRI - HERITAGE MALTA

REUBEN GRIMA - NATIONAL MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY, VALLETTA, MALTA

MIRANDA PUBLICATIONS, MALTA

CHRIS PACE - BLAZE PRODUCTIONS, MALTA

IVAN COCKER - IMAGE SYSTEMS, XEROX PRINT SHOP

MARISA VELLA

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS

NORBERT FRANCIS ATTARD pp. 5, 6, 8, 11, 14-21, 36 - 48, 50-59, 61-75, 77, 78, 80-95, 97 -105, 108, 110,

111, 124, 125 (bottom photo), 128, 129-133, 140, 141, 142 (Resurrection I), 144, 145, 147, 148, 150-155.

DANIEL CILIA © DANIEL CILIA pp. 3, 23-28, 30, 34, 49, 50, 60, 71, 76, 79, 84, 92, 96, 99, 102.

RICHARD COOPER pp.136, 138.

PAUL GILBY pp.120, 159.

PATRICK FENECH pp. 60 (Melons and pumpkins drying in the sun), 112, 139.

ZONE FIVE pp. 4, 14, 134, 135, 137, 142 (Grey is hard to find), 143,149.

GERHARD KLOCKER pp. 130.

PAUL MIZZI pp. 10, 12, 13.

TAKAHIDE KURARA © TAKAHIDE KURARA p.156

JONATHAN SLIGH © NOOSA REGIONAL GALLERY, AUSTRALIA pp. 146.

MARC SPITERI © MAS COMMUNICATIONS, MALTA p. 114.

SIMON STEVEN © TURNER CONTEMPORARY U.K. p. 125 (top photo).

ROB LACEY © ALBURY CITY COUNCIL, N.S.W., AUSTRALIA pp. 126, 127.

EDITORSMain text by Ranier Fsadni

Additional editing by Lisa Gwen Baldacchino

DESIGN LAYOUT AND PHOTOGRAPHY OF WORKS IN KAMIYAMANorbert Francis Attard

Works and photographs by Norbert Francis Attard © Norbert Francis Attard.

www.norbertattard.com

PHOTOGRAPHY OF PREHISTORIC TEMPLES & ARTEFACTSDaniel Cilia.

The photographs by Daniel Cilia in this publication have been published in

Malta before History (2004) by Miranda Publications, Malta.

www.dancilia.com

PHOTOGRAPHY OF CHRONOLOGY WORKS 1998 - 2007Norbert Francis Attard

Paul Mizzi

Patrick Fenech

Gerhard Klocker

Jon Wrigley and Mario Abela (Zone Five)

Richard Cooper

Johnathan Sligh

Simon Steven

Rob Lacey

PHOTOGRAPHY OF ARTISTS’ PORTRAITSMarc Spiteri

Takahide Kurara

Patrick Fenech

Paul Gilby

ARCHAEOLOGICAL ADVISORReuben Grima

TEXT Aomi Okabe © Aomi Okabe. Translated by Hitomi KurochI

Richard England © Richard England

Norbert Francis Attard © Norbert Francis Attard

PUBLISHER midsea BOOKS LTD.

Carmelites Street, Sta. Venera, HMR 11, Malta.

Tel: +356 21497046 Fax:+356 21496904


www.midseabooks.com

PRINTING Printed in Hong Kong and bound in China.

This publication is a collaboration between Norbert Francis Attard and Heritage Malta.

Heritage Malta is the National Agency for Museums,

Conservation Practice and Cultural Heritage.

Old University Buildings,

Merchants Street,Valletta VLT 03, Malta.

Tel: +356 2295 4000, +00356 21222900


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ISBN 0-9727451-0-6All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without the permission of Norbert Francis Attard.

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