Colour Blocking: an exhibition of coloured limestone by Antoine Farrugia

A soft palette of pink skies just before dusk and the setting sun caressing the honey-coloured limestone of the Maltese island’s historic buildings, prehistoric temples, churches and fortifications is an image that continues to captivate us. It is the local Lower Globigerina Limestone (Maltese: franka) that makes these images so recognisably Maltese. Franka has been used for Malta’s building for thousands of years for the islands’ architecture which is almost entirely stone-oriented, and is also particularly suitable for sculpture because of its malleability. Maltese franka was so highly regarded by the British administration, that the stone for the building of the Neoclassical Palace of St Michael and St George on the island of Corfu, Greece, built between 1819 and 1824 and commissioned by Sir Thomas Maitland, was imported Maltese stone.

Limestone is therefore important for Malta not only culturally, economically and historically, but it is now serving as the main medium for a local sculptor to express an abstract mode of expression. Antoine Farrugia (b. 1969) is a sculptor who was born, lives and works in Mqabba and is exhibiting a collection of coloured limestone sculptures for the very first time. Mqabba, a town in the southern region of Malta, is one of Malta’s most important localities for its limestone quarries.

Farrugia works in a variety of media but his forte lies in working in local limestone. This collection of sculptures with block colours was created in 2017 each out of one piece of stone. They are striking for the vivid palette with which they have been finished, sprayed on a surface that is polished and highly reflective in most cases but textured in others. This leaves the viewer questioning what the material actually is, for the way Farrugia manipulates the limestone is particular. These sculptures in purple, red, green, pink and more, brighten any environment they are in and are particularly suitable for The Phoenicia Malta’s spa which is bathed in light and has a play of light and shadows that changes how these organic sculptures appear to guests.

These abstract sculptures are purposely untitled for the viewer to imagine them to be whatever they want. Although being seemingly abstract works, this intrepid sculptor finds inspiration in nature and the human form, a natural point of reference to many artists.

Farrugia held his first solo exhibition in 2003 and has participated in several solo and collective exhibitions since having also travelled to China as a guest artist in July 2016. His work has not yet ceased to amaze for the way he masterfully sculpts the stone into his desired shapes.