The Rabbit Hole Collective #1 brings together five extraordinary artists from across Malta and Gozo. The concept of the ‘rabbit hole’ originates from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, in which one spirals and descends into a surreal state of mind, a hole into which one falls into a nonsensical and confusing unknown through the pursuit of a flustered talking white rabbit.
In the exhibition ‘The Rabbit Hole Collective #1’, taking place at il-Kamra ta’ Fuq, Mqabba between April 25 and May 11, curated by Melanie Erixon, five artists – Maria Baldacchino, SJ Fuerst, and Luca Indraccolo, Karl Fröman, Maria Fröman – take inspiration from this theme with different stylistic approaches and contrasting interpretations.
Maria Baldacchino displays several figures amidst abstract and mysterious settings that reveal stories while conveying nothing at all. Her powerful oil painting ‘Yellow Apparition’ shows a hazy female figure in a yellow dress bearing a disassociated presence, as if unconscious of their existence, like a ghost. Another, ‘Dispossessed’, continues the concept of identity. She is shown emerging out of the shadows and stepping into the unknown. The figure’s face almost blends with the background, symbolising loss of identity, while light falls on the body as it comes closer to the foreground. Other paintings by Baldacchino include ‘Driven by Geist’ and ‘8th Circle’.
Well-known for her mixture of pop culture, classical paintings and mesmerising gallery installations, Gozo’s SJ Fuerst’s works in The Rabbit Hole Collective #1 continue this theme. For this exhibition, SJ shows a series of three small paintings that explore the hypocrisy of mass-produced plastics that are designed to mimic the natural world. She does this by painting on the inflatables, fusing the mass-produced with the custom-made. The animals are designed in a contemporary style and material, yet the chosen animals are taken from art history [as well as Alice’s Wonderland]. The crab is seen in Roman frescos [and also on the shore of Alice’s pool of tears – Ed], the flamingo, in early nature illustrations [and Alice’s infamous croquet match – Ed] and the whale in the paintings of Odilon Redon. The faces that are painted focus forward on the viewer, paralleling our surreal curiosities.
Maria Froman is also showing three paintings, in oil. In her still-life, ‘Wisdom’, she depicts a sequence of apples that appear to elude gravity, resembling Dali’s ‘Nature Morte Vivante’, as well as Magritte’s surrealism. The series references the story of Adam and Eve when Eve eats the forbidden fruit of the knowledge. ‘In contrast, ‘Visual music’ plays homage to Three Little Birds by Bob Marley and ‘Foil’ speaks about us as creators through the creation of foil. That we humans create, write, talk and speak, is highlighted in these paintings.
Taking a more bizarre and nonsensical angle on the theme of the rabbit hole, Karl Froman presents‘Polly Wants a Podcast’. In the work, Froman includes LEGO, constructing a parrot, Polly, with 3D bricks and then capturing it through a 2D medium. The painting is a commentary on the way people use podcasts to repeat information with no real understanding, like a parrot. Alongside, ‘Spacecock’ discusses virtual culture as a whole, and how we put value where there is none. Deception and illusion are recurring themes in the works in The Rabbit Hole Collective #1; how one tries to create something special, from something small like statements from a podcast or something large like a god, to fill a hole.Other paintings include ‘The Fast and the Frivolous’ and ‘50 Shades of Red (Nietzsche up Shits Creek with a Paddle)’.
The fifth artist in the show Luca Indraccolo goes to Naples, Italy, for inspiration and explores different aspects of the city and its culture. In one of his paintings, SMF•75•1•7•76, Indraccolo shows the unfortunate overflow of trash bags that haunt the streets of the city by depicting the mascot, Pulcinella, in contemporary clothes lying on top of them, contrasting the rise of waste and the decline of cultural heritage. SMF•51•78•90 also focuses on heritage and Naples’s relationship with the dead. The city has a long history of leaving offerings, such as religious figurines, as shown in the painting, in return for protection or luck.
SMF•72•21•6•90 stems from the tragic fires that devastated Naples in 2017, destroying forests and creating large amounts of ash and smoke. A figure is shown captured by the smoke, representing the impact the fire had on the people of the region.
As we emerge out of the rabbit hole, viewers will reflect on the layered realities of humanity through identity, culture and creation. Like Alice journeying into Wonderland, the deeper we explore, the more we see. Through each painting, both the artists and the viewer confront, question and respond to what they see.
This article was written by Alaia Grima
‘The Rabbit Hole Collective #1’, curated by Melanie Erixon, runs at il-Kamra ta’ Fuq, Mqabba between April 25 and May 11
