Skart Għani - Sustainable Art Exhibition by Joseph Barbara

Skart Għani
the artistic face of waste

‘Nothing retains its original form, but Nature the goddess of all renewal, keeps altering one shape into another. Nothing at all in the world can perish ... things merely vary and change their appearance’.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV, v.252-255

The Central Bank of Malta is proud to host Skart Għani, a sustainable art exhibition by Joseph Barbara in honour of the late Fr Marius Zerafa, following his passing in October 2022.

Fr Marius was the first Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Central Bank of Malta Fund. Set up by the Bank, the Advisory Board assists the Bank's Board of Directors in identifying meritorious projects worthy of the Bank’s support in the educational, cultural, scientific and social fields.

In this exhibition, Joseph Barbara presents some of his finest examples of sustainable art. Predominantly, sustainable art has been described as the repurposing of existing objects and materials which are no longer usable or helpful in their current form. Barbara sources ordinary objects, and occasionally quite particular ones, to transform and repurpose them into objects of value.

Barbara’s talent caught the attention of Fr Marius, himself an artist, and a polymath, a distinguished art historian, a lecturer, a gifted writer, and an enthusiastic eternal student throughout his life. Perhaps he will be best remembered for masterminding the successful recovery of Caravaggio’s St Jerome in 1984, during his years as Director of Museums and Curator of Fine Arts, which he later documented in his book ‘Caravaggio Diaries’.

Skart Għani will open to the public at the Central Bank of Malta Polverista, entrance from Tritoni Square, Valletta, on Monday, 5 June from 08:15 to 13:45.