A new exhibition, Gaudos by George Apap in Victoria’s Banca Giuratale, presents the Gozo of the artist’s memories. In more than thirty watercolours painted over the last two years, Apap captures quiet moments and rugged coastlines, the turning sails of a windmill amongst the bougainvillea and a donkey on a dusty back street. It’s a nostalgic collection of his childhood home and the places and faces he remembers. Times2 caught up with him to find out more.
“I remember the fishermen, brown and suntanned, with a strong whiff of sea and fish, their heads high like alabaster statues,” he says.
“I recall the summer nights on our doorstep where in silence and peace I listened to stories and yarns of old.
I remember the heat of summer when farmers bent double walked up our street at sunset.
I remember the cold rainy days when barefooted I used to splash with other boys in muddy pools after a heavy downpour.
I recall my father, the village church organist, shaking me out of my childhood dreams in the early hours and walking me to church.
I recall the family huddled together in our little kitchen. gobbling hungrily the warm food mother had cooked for us . . .”
“Gaudos is the original name given to Gozo by the Phoenicians. Gaudos means ‘joy’ and this is my contribution to the land I was born in, and which has given me so many wonderful happy years.”
“Although I am now living somewhere else, Gozo will always stay with me and I need from time to time to cross over and have a Gozo ‘injection’. As they say, you can take the man from Gozo but you cannot take Gozo from the man.”
“My paintings do not show Gozo as it is today but are instead a sentimental journey back to what Gozo was like when I was a child.With the help of old photos and drawings, they include characters from my childhood. There was a lot of poverty after the war and people used to come around our street and ask for help: money or food. And people helped. There was more time and space for everything and everyone.”
“But sadly Gozo is changing its identity, its character, its values and its soul. It is no longer the same. Alongside the paintings I am also presenting a collection of photos showing some of the terrible buildings across much of dear Gozo. I hope that by presenting the Gozo we grew up in during the early fifties in my paintings alongside these photos, they might help to change things in Gozo before it is too late. Perhaps my pictures will instil some awareness, some remorse and act as a wake-up call to put a halt to the current building frenzy. We grew up in the street and the fields around my mother’s house: now the fields are gone. Old houses have been replaced by match box buildings.“
“With my paintings I am saying, ‘Look! We were better when we were worse! We had very little but we had all we needed.’”
