Nina Gerada: Frammenti

Nina Gerada
Frammenti

An online solo collection
14th November - 1st December

Photograph by Andre Ainsworth

Frammenti (fragments)

“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.” ― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

The pieces are clay collages. Made of carved fragments and reconfigured to create new perspectives. I start by meticulously making hundreds of blocks of clay. It is repetitive and precise. The blocks are painted and etched freely with no preconceived plan. I carve the drawings, cutting and tearing the clay blocks. Following firing, the fragments are arranged and rearranged, as though a search for a hidden answer. The result is elusive, and there is the suggestion that they could be rearranged once more.

There are temples, islands, enclosures, suggestions of females forms and elements of words. They are all carved, a subtractive rather than additive process. The removal of clay referencing the carved limestone spaces of Malta, where I am from.

The fragments are held together by bespoke welded steel plates, some wall mounted some work as stands. They can be placed both indoors and outdoors – where the metal will continue to weather and change.

I made these pieces during a time of uncertainty. I’d been away from my home country for 20 years. I began to notice that in migrating I’d started to loose parts of my identity, and I wasn’t sure what to keep, what to accept, what to fight for, what to discard. I am from a post-colonial country, and I believe this collage process is also relevant in the post-colonial context in which we must revisit our history – one that has been shaped by others - and create a new identity from it.

Nina Gerada 2024

In Conversation

Artist Bisila Noha interviews Nina Gerada.

The conversation delves into many of the themes that Gerada explores in her work: post-colonisation, memory, place, belonging.

They also discuss carving as a Maltese motif; and the process of reconfiguring in times of uncertainty.

Salt Pans by Nina Gerada, Malta

Nina Gerada’s work remembers archaeological digs, maps, empty swimming pools, the female form, bricks, blueprints, typesetting blocks, the home, the temple. Her process begins by carving and tearing the clay, exposing fault lines, adding insertions. These broad actions are combined with bold but intricately tooled forms that skirt close to figurative imaginings of the megalithic temples of her homeland.

Still unfired, Gerada slices her tightly evocative sculptures into smaller sections. The pieces are contemplatively recomposed, searching for patterns and connections across multiple scales. Spaces are uncovered, providing at once protection and a means of escape. Courtyards, rooms and tombs appear as reflections of women’s bodies, wombs, breasts and vulvas. Totemic symbols intertwining notions of women as life giving vessels, of mothering and the psychological theories of containment, the impulse to be embedded in the rock, and a yearning for community and connectedness.

Firing clay exacts irreversible molecular change - ceramics are the imposition of human agency on geological time. Honouring this; Gerada’s recent work is often intentionally cracked in the kiln, reminding us of weathered buildings and ageing skin. This stochastic movement makes connections between timescales: The artist and her life story. Her audience and its prehistory.

Connect by Nina Gerada

Photograph by Andre Ainsworth

Details from the collection by Nina Gerada

Hold by Nina Gerada

About the Artist

Nina Gerada is a sculptor who lives and works in London and Malta. Born in Malta in 1983, from an early age she had a rigorous and traditional training in art. She moved to London in 2002 where she studied Art, Design and Architecture. She is a graduate of London Metropolitan University (2011), The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL (2006), Chelsea College of Art (2003) and is a Higher Education Teaching Fellow (2018). Her career has spanned different fields and she has worked at a multitude of scales; including Production Design, Urban Design, Architecture and Map Making before focussing on sculpture.

Gerada’s sculptures merge figurative and architectural motifs, exploring the interconnectedness between buildings, communities and people. References to the Neolithic statues, temples and artefacts of Malta appear in her work, exploring the female, immigrant and post-colonial experience. Her training in architecture and urban design are evident in the vast scales and spatial preoccupation of her work.

Gerada has recently exhibited at The Malta Society of Arts. She participated in the inaugural Malta Art Biennale in 2024. She was selected to exhibit at ‘Fresh’, at the British Ceramics Biennial 2023 and at ‘Collect’ with Thrown Contemporary at Somerset House, London (2023, 2022). Other exhibitions of note include Debut, &Gallery, Edinburgh (2024), The Middle Room, LA (2024), London Craft Week (2021) and The Daphne Festival, London (2022).