There's No Place Like Home
A two-day pop-up exhibition
21 & 22 July 2018
21 & 22 July 2018
Shelves, fuse-boxes and shower-heads and saints are all visible, laid bare to the elements, and still blinking in the harsh light of day. The old neighbourhoods of Sliema and Gzira – like many others around Malta – are under attack from rapid over-development, with little regard for quality of life or neighbourhood aesthetics. Piles of rubble and concrete walls have replaced elegant facades, and it seems that even the demolition job is carried out in a hurry, leaving behind evidence of lives that were once lived in them.
There’s No Place Like Home is a project that documents these rapid changes, and the private traces they make temporarily public. Over the course of 18 months, I have documented empty walls, abandoned wall-tiles and dislocated staircases, photographing around 100 sites during that period in Sliema and Gzira alone. (I haven’t had the resources to cover the rest of Malta; there are other localities experiencing the same transformation). The process has been a sad one; not in a nostalgic sense – after all, nothing lasts forever – but because of the aggressive nature of the process; blink and you’ll miss it – blink and someone’s home has been razed to the ground overnight.
The process also had a voyeuristic nature; seventies bathroom décor, pink bedroom wallpaper, even holy pictures were abandoned and left for everyone to see. There was also an element of transgression in the project; sometimes I could trespass and enter the building-site-that-was-once-someone’s-house, and wander around, picking through bits of old furniture and broken floor-tiles, until a fence or brick wall was eventually put up. The whole thing was almost like conflict-tourism; it’s strangely easy to get excited about finding another collapsed building and marvelling about the destruction of its proportions and brickwork.
In a strange way, the project has become an act of duty; documenting the remains of buildings before they disappear completely.
Nothing lasts forever, and change can be allowed to happen. But in recent years it seems like we’re looking for something in our environment to stay still for long enough to catch up and catch our breath. We can’t walk away from what’s being changed so suddenly, but we’re not part of the process either. The neighbourhood is left reeling in shock from the too-fast speed of the transformation, unable to keep up with what’s happening to it. In this knock-down frenzy there is no room for natural cycles.
This two-day pop-up exhibition gives a glimpse into this project, and into the remains of some of the old houses and interiors in Sliema and Gzira. Visitors are welcome to examine to map of building sites, to add to the documentation, and to attempt to traces a familiar route through their neighbourhoods.
There’s No Place Like Home is a project that documents these rapid changes, and the private traces they make temporarily public. Over the course of 18 months, I have documented empty walls, abandoned wall-tiles and dislocated staircases, photographing around 100 sites during that period in Sliema and Gzira alone. (I haven’t had the resources to cover the rest of Malta; there are other localities experiencing the same transformation). The process has been a sad one; not in a nostalgic sense – after all, nothing lasts forever – but because of the aggressive nature of the process; blink and you’ll miss it – blink and someone’s home has been razed to the ground overnight.
The process also had a voyeuristic nature; seventies bathroom décor, pink bedroom wallpaper, even holy pictures were abandoned and left for everyone to see. There was also an element of transgression in the project; sometimes I could trespass and enter the building-site-that-was-once-someone’s-house, and wander around, picking through bits of old furniture and broken floor-tiles, until a fence or brick wall was eventually put up. The whole thing was almost like conflict-tourism; it’s strangely easy to get excited about finding another collapsed building and marvelling about the destruction of its proportions and brickwork.
In a strange way, the project has become an act of duty; documenting the remains of buildings before they disappear completely.
Nothing lasts forever, and change can be allowed to happen. But in recent years it seems like we’re looking for something in our environment to stay still for long enough to catch up and catch our breath. We can’t walk away from what’s being changed so suddenly, but we’re not part of the process either. The neighbourhood is left reeling in shock from the too-fast speed of the transformation, unable to keep up with what’s happening to it. In this knock-down frenzy there is no room for natural cycles.
This two-day pop-up exhibition gives a glimpse into this project, and into the remains of some of the old houses and interiors in Sliema and Gzira. Visitors are welcome to examine to map of building sites, to add to the documentation, and to attempt to traces a familiar route through their neighbourhoods.