The iconic Manikata church, designed by Richard England, has long been considered a highlight in Malta’s modernist architectural heritage. Perhaps the landscape’s most truly vernacular church, its innovative yet simple rounded form was inspired by the girna, a traditional corbelled stone hut. The interior is pleasingly simple with stylish clean lines and a calm intimacy. An new exhibition at Malta Society of Arts marks fifty years since the its inauguration as a parish church and marks the way the building continues to inspire us.
“The church is a space of silence,” says Curator Andrew Borg Wirth, Creative Director at Archbishop’s Delegate for Culture. “Its threshold attempts to mask the sound of its outside. Whilst an abundant birdsong hovers around its walls, the architect sees potential in conserving its absence.”
“Richard England, in Manikata, understood the responsibility of creating an architecture which, he describes, is of its time and of its place,” he explains. “The site proved fertile ground both for his ideas, and those of the artists who came to Malta in the 1975 Edinburgh Festival.”
Fifty years later, Borg Wirth and co-curator Sera Galea invited four artists to draw inspiration from Manikata Church as their inspiration once again — to channel the sacred, engage with its site, and create work that is ‘of and for the now’.
In this resultant show, Austin Camilleri, Julian Vassallo, Victor Agius, and Laetitia Troisi De Menville each explore their relationship with Manikata, its surrounding landscape, architecture, and sacredness through the mediums of sculpture, photography, and music.
“Silence within Abundant Birdsong emerges as a space of confluence, across disciplines and media, speaking of the timeless human pursuit for the divine — a pursuit perhaps more urgent now than ever. This, it finds in the earth, stone and land, and in forcing an upward gaze to the sky,” continues Borg Wirth.
The show includes ‘A Sonic Portait of Home’ by harpist Laetitia Troisi De Menville, and Luman, a sculptural work by Camilleri, created from local limestone that has been worked to include a small lit doorway, reminding the individual of their tiny place in a giant world of golden light over an eternal land.
Silence within Abundant Birdsong is part of an effort to strengthen dialogue between the Church in Malta and the cultural world. It encourages visitors to reflect upon the sacred within silence and the echoes of a landscape rich in history and meaning at the intersection of art, architecture, and spirituality. And in the final room of the exhibition, beneath the gaze of the Grand Masters, a newly-constructed pew shaped like those in Manitaka church reminds visitors of time spent – and to be spent – in hallowed contemplation within the walls of this iconic church.
A book launch for the accompanying catalogue will take place on Thursday 10 April. The volume will include contributions from Prof. Joe Friggieri, Prof. Maria Frendo, Elyse Tonna, Ella Fleri Soler, Anthony Bonnici, an interview with Richard England by Ann Dingli, and a foreword by Chris Abel.
The exhibition runs until April 24 at the Malta Society of Arts, Valletta. The project was supported by APS Bank, The Alfred Mizzi Foundation, RLAUTIER and Spades Wines & Spirits.
