FIGURE & GROUND: BODIES, PLACES AND LIVING FORM
A collective exhibition
August 2026
FIGURE & GROUND: Bodies, Places and Living Forms brings together thirteen artists whose practices span painting, drawing, photography and sculpture.
Deliberately diverse in subject, medium and style, the exhibition reflects how art is most often experienced: not in isolation, but alongside works of differing character within the intimate and layered surroundings of private settings. From landscapes and interiors to the human figure, still life and the animal world, each work invites a personal connection.
Together, the works create a conversation between figure and setting, presence and atmosphere, observation and imagination.
Meet the Artists
Discover the artists participating in FIGURE & GROUND and learn more about their individual practices.
Alaine Baker
Alaine Baker is a Maltese artist whose painting practice explores the relationship between place, memory and human experience. Drawing upon familiar urban and coastal environments, she considers how spaces retain narratives of presence, absence and belonging. Colour is central to her work, functioning not merely as a descriptive element but as an expressive visual language through which atmosphere and meaning are constructed. Baker is equally attentive to the physical qualities of her medium, allowing the texture, surface and gesture of paint to remain visible. Her compositions balance observation with emotional interpretation, transforming recognisable locations into meditations on memory, perception and an individual’s connection to place.
Johanna Barthet
Johanna Barthet is a Maltese contemporary artist whose predominantly figurative and expressionist practice centres on portraiture and the human form. Although she studied art from an early age and attended various courses in Malta, she is largely self-taught. Working primarily in oils and oil pastels, Barthet employs bold colour, expressive line and psychologically charged compositions to explore identity, memory, vulnerability and the complexities of human experience. Her figures are rarely conventional portraits; rather, they convey private emotional states and invite reflection on how individuals perceive themselves and how they are perceived by others. Her solo exhibitions include Stories Untold (2019), Dreamscapes (2021), The Little Room Upstairs (2022), Now You See Me (2023), Coming Home to Me (2024) and Stories Revisited (2026).
Debbie Bonello
Debbie Bonello is a Maltese visual artist and art tutor whose practice centres principally on oil painting. Inspired by the coastline of Mellieħa, where she grew up, she is particularly known for her expressive en plein air landscapes and seascapes, although her subjects also encompass portraiture, the human figure and animals. Her paintings are characterised by loose, confident brushwork and a sensitive response to light, atmosphere and personal experience. Bonello has participated in collective exhibitions since 1997 and has presented several solo exhibitions, including [ONE] at Palazzo de Piro, Mdina, in 2017 and Gatherings at Il-Kamra ta’ Fuq in 2021. Her work is represented in private collections in Malta, Europe, Canada and the United States.
Julia Borg
Born in Germany to Russian parents, Julia Borg initially pursued a career in engineering and interior design before devoting herself professionally to painting in 2013. Her move to Malta proved transformative, with the island’s Mediterranean light, colour and natural environment becoming central to her practice. Working in oils, acrylics and mixed media, Borg creates vibrant semi-abstract compositions distinguished by saturated colour, layered textures and a distinctive mosaic-like treatment of form. Her floral paintings and landscapes draw upon Impressionism while developing a personal visual language centred on beauty, emotional renewal and the relationship between nature and inner experience. Her solo exhibitions have included In Bloom and Inner Garden at The Phoenicia Malta, as well as Art Journey in Gozo. Her work is held in private collections internationally.
Johanna Calleja
Johanna Calleja is a Maltese ceramic artist whose sustained engagement with clay began in 2004. Her interest in art developed at an early age and was encouraged at school by the late Margaret Chircop, who introduced her to experimentation across different media and techniques. Calleja is particularly drawn to the three-dimensional possibilities of clay and to the element of transformation inherent in the glazing and firing processes. She produces both vessels and pictorial ceramic works, allowing form, surface and colour to interact in pieces that combine functionality with personal expression. She continues to develop her practice under the guidance of ceramicist Mariz Cassar, embracing the medium's unpredictability as an integral part of each finished work.
Catherine Cavallo
Catherine Cavallo is a Maltese contemporary painter whose practice encompasses figurative compositions, landscapes and works inspired by the natural world. She studied Fine Art and Oil Painting at the City & Guilds of London Art School from 1981 to 1985, graduating with a First-Class Honours Diploma. She subsequently received a UNESCO fellowship to study textile conservation at Hampton Court Palace. Cavallo spent nine years in London, where the city’s subdued atmosphere shaped her palette and early figurative work. A subsequent three-year period in Tuscany introduced greater luminosity and colour into her painting and fostered her enduring engagement with landscape. Working principally in oils, often applied with a palette knife, she also employs mixed media to move freely between realism and expressionism. Her paintings explore nature, human experience and the tensions between serenity and upheaval, frequently using gardens, trees and the female figure as carriers of emotional and symbolic meaning.
Henry Falzon
Henry Falzon is a Maltese contemporary artist based in Naxxar. His practice developed from an early involvement with black-and-white photography during the 1990s, an experience that shaped his sensitivity to composition, tonality and atmosphere. Largely self-taught, he subsequently turned to drawing and painting, working principally in oils and pastels while also exploring traditional printmaking. Falzon is known particularly for his luminous landscapes and seascapes, frequently presented from unexpected or elevated viewpoints. His work moves between observation and imagination, transforming familiar environments through subtle shifts in colour, light and perspective. Figurative painting has also become an increasingly significant strand of his practice, through which he explores memory, perception and human connection. He has exhibited in Malta and internationally, and his work is held in Maltese and overseas collections.
Audrey Mercieca
Audrey Mercieca is a Maltese multidisciplinary artist working across painting, watercolour, pastel, sculpture and printmaking. She studied art and art history under Joseph Paul Cassar and developed her practice through tuition with Charles Cassar, Anton Calleja, Alfred Briffa, Winston Hassall, Angelo Agius and Joseph Chetcuti. She later attended courses in drawing, painting and sculpture at the Florence Academy of Art and its Swedish branch. Mercieca’s work is grounded in close observation and a sensitive response to colour, atmosphere and the human figure, while her landscapes are often distinguished by a pronounced sense of tranquillity. She has participated in numerous exhibitions and international events, including Fabriano in Acquarello and an en plein air exhibition in Tropea. Her solo exhibitions include My Journey through Nature and Atmospheric Landscapes. She received Ġieħ l-Għasri in 2018 and a recognition award from the Luqa Local Council in 2025.
Tiphaine Popesco
Tiphaine Popesco is a photographic artist whose work explores isolation, disorientation and the psychological relationship between the human figure and domestic space. She places adults and children within interiors that range from sparsely furnished to densely cluttered, constructing ambiguous settings that imply narratives without prescribing a fixed interpretation. Her sitters frequently appear withdrawn or physically constrained, with obscured faces and carefully arranged poses heightening their sense of solitude and emotional detachment. In her studies of the nude, classical poses and strong contrasts of black and white emphasise the sculptural qualities of the body. Popesco works principally with analogue photography, producing silver gelatin prints in the darkroom. Through carefully controlled composition and an absence of sentimentality, her images invite viewers to project their own associations and emotional responses onto each scene.
Peter Quinn
Peter Quinn RWS RSW is a Scottish artist and art historian, born in Dumfries and based in Newcastle upon Tyne. He graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1986 and later obtained a doctorate from the University of Sunderland, specialising in art and regional identity in north-east England. Quinn is renowned for his vividly coloured watercolours of buildings, boats, streets and marketplaces. Drawn to ordinary and frequently overlooked locations, he transforms the details of everyday life into lively compositions that retain the immediacy of his sketchbook studies. Signs, wires and human figures animate his scenes, inviting viewers to imagine the narratives unfolding within them. Quinn became a full member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 2011 and was elected to the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour in 2023. His enduring relationship with Malta was celebrated in the 2019 monograph Quinn in Malta.
Amelia Saint George
Amelia Saint George is a British-French contemporary sculptor who has lived and worked in Valletta for more than twenty years, having previously resided in London and Aix-en-Provence. Working principally in clay and bronze, her figurative practice encompasses animals and wildlife, portraiture and sculpture in miniature. Her work combines close observation and careful attention to detail with a distinctive sense of movement, character and, at times, gentle humour. Saint George has exhibited extensively in Malta and internationally, including in London, Paris, Rome, Switzerland and the United States, where her work has received several awards. She also undertakes portrait commissions and teaches sculpture from her Valletta studio, sharing the technical and observational foundations that inform her own practice.
Emrach Uskovski
Emrach Uskovski is a Slovak contemporary artist based in Malta whose practice explores the emotional and psychological dimensions of creativity. Working between figuration and abstraction, he transforms recognisable forms into visual metaphors for experiences that can be difficult to articulate: inspiration, uncertainty, stillness, creative overflow, exhaustion and discovery. Through bold colour relationships and simplified forms, Uskovski employs the human figure not as a portrait of individual identity but as a vessel for internal states. His recent body of work, I Am Lost, examines the creative process in all its contradictions, moving between the exhilaration of new ideas and the fatigue that can follow their realisation. Rather than merely illustrating creativity, his paintings invite viewers to inhabit its unpredictable rhythms and to recognise the creative journey as beautiful, unsettling, chaotic and profoundly human.
Kenneth Zammit Tabona
Kenneth Zammit Tabona is a Maltese artist and illustrator distinguished by his highly recognisable pen-and-ink drawings and watercolours. His richly decorative compositions celebrate Malta’s landscapes, architecture, interiors and social traditions through vibrant colour, theatrical framing and imaginative detail. Particularly characteristic are his fuoridentro compositions: elaborate interiors opening onto Mediterranean gardens, villages and seascapes, in which still-life objects, patterned textiles and architectural elements create layered visual narratives. Zammit Tabona has exhibited regularly since the early 1990s, and his work is represented in prominent collections in Malta and overseas. Alongside his visual practice, he has enjoyed an influential career in Malta’s cultural sector and is the founder and artistic director of the Valletta International Baroque Festival. He has also illustrated numerous publications and designed sets and costumes for theatrical productions.
