The following is an interesting article written by Veronica Stivala and published in ENCORE (Issue 45, June–August 2026), a magazine that offers inclusive coverage of arts and culture in Malta.

As Gozo gears up for its stint as the European Capital for Culture, Victoria 2031, a new wave of public art is reshaping the island’s landscape. As the name implies, the 4 Arti initiative involves four distinct artistic voices: Austin Camilleri, Christopher Saliba, Vince Caruana and Mario Agius. While the works of Caruana and Agius are slated for installation in the coming months, the first two monuments have already taken their place in the public eye, sparking vital conversation about what it means to build a monument in the 21st century. This project is a political and aesthetic assertion. To understand the philosophy behind the bronze and the rust, I spoke with the two artists whose works are currently defining this new cultural landscape.

Austin Camilleri: The art of unstable encounters

At Ras ir-Reqqa, where the rugged limestone meets the sea, a bronze horse structure with eight legs now stands as a lightning rod for cultural debate. Austin Camilleri’s WIEHED has already sparked heated discussions, but for the artist, this friction is precisely where reflection begins. “When a work is placed in a public space, whatever the space, it is shifting its perception and reframing the collective imagination of the place,” Camilleri muses. For him, resistance is a natural impulse. The work sits in a deliberate dialogue with the site’s invisible geography, specifically the submerged Billinghurst Cave and the island’s geological contours. Responding to critics who feel a human-made structure ‘defiles’ the site, Camilleri points to the Constitution, which states that art is never an antagonist of nature. “I wanted WIEHED to gradually become part of the site, in dialogue with the curvature, the erosion, the sense of deep time,” he comments. The form itself is what Camilleri calls a “playful take on traditional iconographies.” By stripping away the hero or the commander usually found on a horse, he asks the viewer to focus on a form that is both familiar and alien.

The artist’s work has received polarised reactions, including criticism about its location at a Natura 2000 site and its form. On the other hand, art critic Philip Borg argues that the sculpture’s “unsettling form” is its greatest strength, as it “resists a fixed reading”. This sentiment is echoed by journalist Dayna Camilleri Clarke, who champions the work as a masterclass in subversion: “The sculpture nods to classical statues… but strips away their usual sense of authority.”

Camilleri embraces the polarising reaction, noting that once a work enters the public realm, it no longer belongs to him.” It is owned by those who encounter it, whether only in passing or on a regular basis,” he asserts. Its success, he believes, lies in its ability to remain open, shifting and alive across time.

Christopher Saliba: Gravity, recognition and rust

If Camilleri’s work is a dialogue with the coast, Christopher Saliba’s Encounter is a negotiation with time. The sculpture consists of two interlocking steel plates that rise from a roundabout, featuring a central circular aperture that frames the surrounding landscape like a modern-day oracle hole. Describing the work as a “modern megalith”, Saliba views it as a precise articulation of how a sculpture negotiates material and authorship. His reference to Ġgantija introduces an ancient condition of “gravity”, the feeling that the object has “always already been there, lodged within the landscape rather than placed upon it.”

The creation of Encounter was a dance between digital precision and manual labour. While the form was digitally conceived and CNC-cut, its physical realisation depended on the painstaking work of curving, assembling and welding steel sheets by hand. “Where Ġgantija emerged through communal intuition… Encounter is shaped through a dialogue between measured calculation and bodily effort,” Saliba explicates. The sculpture‘s reddish oxidation explicitly recalls the red ochres used by prehistoric ancestors in rituals and markings. Because the steel is a ‘living material’ that records the passage of weather and salt air, the work accepts transformation as part of its identity. “Ageing is not a loss of form, but an accumulation of time,” Saliba says.

The circular oracle hole in the sculpture refers to time understood as cyclical rather than linear. Just as the holes in ancient temples aligned bodies and light within repeating seasonal patterns, the cutout in Encounter becomes a hinge between past and present. As light passes through it, the sculpture reminds us that contemporary public space still carries layered histories beneath its surface.
 
Ultimately, Saliba believes public art should shift away from passive spectatorship toward participation. Encounter requires the viewer to walk around it and negotiate its mass; the title itself suggests the work is not consumed visually, but met bodily.
 

A Sacred Dialogue was conceived as a quiet yet deeply reflective encounter between contemporary art and the sacred. This joint exhibition, presented during the Holy Week period at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Victoria, Gozo, brought my work into dialogue with the sculptural practice of Mario Sammut. Rather than relying on traditional religious iconography, the exhibition sought to open a contemplative space where faith, doubt, suffering and hope could be explored through a contemporary visual language. 

My contribution revisits moments from the life and Passion of Christ, not in an illustrative or devotional sense, but as human experiences charged with vulnerability and quiet intensity. Through painting, sculpture and mixed media, I aimed to distil these narratives into expressive forms where colour, gesture and atmosphere carry emotional and symbolic weight. Figures often appear partially dissolved or indistinct - a conscious choice that allows the observer to inhabit the work and recognise themselves within these moments of uncertainty, fragility and grace.
 
The exhibition was curated by Joseph Calleja and unfolded as a true dialogue -  not only between two artists working in different media, but between past and present, material presence and spiritual search. Displayed within the seminary’s contemplative setting, the works invited slow looking and inward reflection, allowing meaning to emerge gently rather than through prescription. 
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Ultimately, A Sacred Dialogue proposed the sacred as something lived and felt, rather than formally defined - a space where contemporary art becomes a vessel for shared human experience, and where light, even when fragile, continues to emerge from moments of darkness and doubt.

Encounter evolved from an earlier conceptual proposal that explored my long-standing fascination with the megalithic structures of Ġgantija and their relevance to contemporary identity. Over time, the idea was refined into a minimalist sculptural dialogue: two upright forms conceived as modern megaliths, reduced to their essential presence while retaining symbolic weight.

Throughout the development process, I focused on balance - between mass and void, proximity and distance, past and present. The circular opening that emerges when the two forms are read together became central to the work, referencing Neolithic oracle holes and the cyclical nature of time, while also creating a moment of light and pause within the composition. The choice of corten steel allowed the sculpture to age gracefully, its surface evolving naturally in response to the environment, much like stone shaped by centuries.

​Encounter was commissioned by the Ministry for Gozo and Planning through its Public Art Scheme, as part of a wider initiative to introduce contemporary artworks into Gozo’s public spaces. Installed at a key junction linking communities, the work was conceived not only as a landmark, but as an invitation to reflect on continuity, heritage and progress within the rhythm of everyday life.

​Placed within the public realm, Encounter invites reflection in everyday life. It asks us to consider where we come from, where we stand, and how our shared history continues to shape who we are becoming.