SPRING v2.1

We’re back at The Mill with our new edition of SPRING! The second call of our Artistic Programme is bearing its fruit with the first exhibition featuring Jamie Barbara and Samuel Ciantar. These emerging duo will be showing their site specific works at The Mill as part of SPRING v2.1.

Jamie Barbara is a Maltese-British sound artist, composer and electronic musician. His practice focuses on exploring themes related to social injustice, past and present communities whilst experimenting with different methods and media. His work is heavily influenced by interpretations of surrounding contexts and the emotions these invoke. Interpreted through musical compositions and soundscapes, it often connects to the past, presenting alternative approaches to the present. Jamie is a freelance creative with five years of experience in the performing and visual arts sector having assisted in over 70 performances, exhibitions and films to date.

Samuel Ciantar is currently reading for a Masters in Architecture & Conservation at the University of Malta. Over the past years he got the opportunity to work with 72 Hour Urban Action, Orfeo & Majnun and the Valletta Design Cluster on temporary, site-specific interventions in the Maltese urban landscape. In 2019, he worked with Critical Concrete in Porto, a social enterprise prototyping social and sustainable architecture. Translating this cross-disciplinarity to his creative work, Samuel is interested in the thresholds of art practice, architecture & design, researching new ways of perceiving our position within larger ecological processes. His most recent work was part of fuse, a community-driven project around Valletta’s Old Abattoir.

The exhibition, in transition, curated by Elyse Tonna is showing works that are intimately linked to The Mill, all the work being developed over the past months. Employing past narratives of The Mill as a point of departure, Samuel Ciantar and Jamie Barbara reimagine the spaces within through site-specific works. Samuel and Jamie embarked on an exploration extracting aspects related to both The Mill’s original use as a wind-powered structure and also a studio space of modern artist Gabriel Caruana. Individually and collectively the artists translate quasi-intangible facets related to The Mill overlapping them with contemporary realities through sound, video and installation work. Their unique approaches combine elements of the seen and unseen, using The Mill as a case study to raise awareness on more global issues. By zooming in on in situ micro residues such as polluted dust deposited on window sills and paint splatters on floors, they bridge aspects related to air and sound pollution, the densification of our urban environments and the lack of similar artist-run spaces.