This Week • November 16 2003

Pushing photography to the edge

Patrick Fenech is one of a few Maltese photographers who has pushed photography as art rather than craft. He has taken his works to the edge and like Bob Dylan is fond of radical change. In one of his early exhibitions he featured black and white close ups of industrial coiled jagged tools and soon after presented romantic Maltese and Gozitan scenes, again in black and white – these were also turned into postcards and remain one of the best set ever produced. His last one-man exhibition ‘Noontime in the Boatyard’ featured massive photographs portraying the different lights, colours and moods of Maltese fishing boats. Patrick is also part of START a group exhibiting art installations in their own space. At one recent event, Fenech used a household’s most comforting items, a TV and a toilet as the altarpieces for his work. It proved to be one of the highlights of the show.
Julian Manduca caught up with him this week:
You did not start your working life as a photographer. What moved you in that direction?
True. In my young days I wanted to be independent quickly, so I got a job with a leading insurance company. I was very interested in the history of modern art and did a lot of drawing and painting with my dad and the late Esprit Barthet at the School of Art. When I was 20 my Indian girlfriend bought me a SLR professional camera for my birthday, and that was it. I'd found my medium. I set myself to learn the techniques of developing and printing and read "On photography" by Susan Sontag like mad. Now, I thought, I could really do some reasonably good photography.
Your exhibitions are characterised by very different styles each time. What does this say about you?
Boredom is my worst enemy. I don't think you can do much of one thing. You create a few good pieces and that's one style over and done with and then you move on. We, as human beings, are constantly changing and so is our environment and I have to respond to change. I cannot develop new ideas using old formulae.
It is said that the advent photography killed art as we knew it. What do you comment?
On the contrary, photography liberated the arts. There is no longer the need to paint 'verosimile' pictures in oils which had dominated the European way of seeing for four centuries. Photography could now do the job perfectly. So painters had to turn to other forms of expression. Then came the impressionists who used the effects of light sometimes using the cameras, and right down to abstract art eliminating the concept of the figurative and emphasising the emotions of pure form and colour. So really photography brought about a revolution in more ways than one. In no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages, as in the cities we live in. Photography became a recipe for
publicity.
Do you have a strong interest in the great photographers of the past or the contemporary ones? What do you follow and where would you advise budding photographers to look?
Of course it’s an integral part of my cultural baggage and would be even if I never practised photography. I enjoy reading about Leonardo and Titian as much as Picasso, Burri, Ansel Adams, Elliot Erwin and Man Ray. At the moment I'm into Steve Mc Queen who won the Turner Prize a couple of years back, Bill Viola, Peter Greenaway is a must and there is this American photographer, David Le Chappel who does crazy things with fashion photography.
What are you preparing now, where and when and can you tell us something about your upcoming exhibition - what can people expect?
At the moment I’m very active with the START group of Maltese artists promoting contemporary art. We've had great shows like City Spaces in Valletta and this year Borders at Pinto stores with a publication carrying the same title. On a personal level in December and January I’m putting up a show at the Woburn Fine Arts Gallery in the UK, which will feature a follow up on the ‘Noontime
in the Boatyard’ collection. I’m also preparing a multimedia exhibition on the same theme, the sea, boatyard, mermaids etc. for next year.
Do you think art should mirror/reflect on/criticise politics and society..do you think Maltese artists are doing that?
As I said earlier on, an artist has to respond to his or her environment, current events, society, politics etc. I simply cannot sit down and paint pretty pictures. That is for Sunday painters. In the meantime there are other important issues to be dealt with, other media to use. "Contemporary art is not about mahogany frames. It transbounds and is recoiled and yet, is dependent on the great experiment of trying and testing the new. Above all we as artists try to avoid habit and containment." This is an excerpt from Richard Davis’ intro as curator of the Borders Show in the exhibition publication. And that is the reason why START, a group of Maltese artists, exists today.