Fragmented Sculptures of an Island Coast by Alex Attard , is a selection of limited edition works taken from the publication Exposure published last year in collaboration with Kite group. Fragmented Sculptures of an Island Coast, is an eight-year-long journey documenting the interface where land meets sea. Weathered and worn, the sculpted rock face stands as silent witness to the passage of time, reminding us of the beauty that emerges from impermanence.
Born from the patient chisel of time, nature’s fragmented sculptures emerge as testament to the ceaseless dance between the elements. Erosion, that master sculptor, wields its tools with grace and abandon upon the indomitable rock face of our island’s coast. Wind and water trace their own narratives into the stone. They etch their way onto the unyielding nature of our coast, now bearing the scars of a thousand storms. Its grandeur is tempered but its story is magnified.
Attard is a Malta-based art and architecture photographer with an acute sense of line and space. His aesthetic varies from the stark and minimal, to quasi abstract, to figurative. He prefers to develop his work in series, in an attempt to scrutinise and explore a subject as extensively as possible.
He is best known as the author of the visual essays titled The Overlooked Performance and Parallel Existences. The former chronicles the unconscious behaviour of workers, their inadvertent gestures and pictorially abstract formations beneath the surface of Renzo Piano’s iconic parliament in Valletta, and the Parallel Existences series conceives and suggests alternative identities to restore hope to never-before-seen centuries old manuscripts irretrievably damaged during the war in 1942 by returning time, memory and purpose to history in a state of stasis.
A portfolio of photographs from both these essays now form part of the National Art Collection of Malta. Parallel Existences is also the subject of a book published by Kite Group. Alex’s work has been featured in several high-end shows and projects, including participation in the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale with Architecture Project, with whom he also collaborated on a group exhibition in Paris, titled Reasonable Dreams, whilst also having participated in the 2015 Mdina Contemporary Art Biennale.
His work has been published in various international art and design magazines, and trend-setting platforms, such as Archdaily, iGNAT, ElleDecor and others. In 2018, together with architects Konrad Buhagiar and Erica Giusta, he contributed with his photographs to the book Spontaneous (Libria, Italia).
Fragmented Sculptures runs between August 7 and September 25 at Marie Gallery, Sliema.