29/11/2025
Two artists who form part of the newly set-up ArtHive Co-operative Ltd have come together and are putting on a joint exhibition of their work. This collaboration between textile artist Judie Farrugia and photographer John Grech presents us with a small but forceful collection of 10 works on the theme of the environment.
Judie works with textiles to produce scenes that at first glance may seem playful, but once the viewer gets close to the work, they will be hit by the realisation that the work is involved, intricate and painstaking, and may find that maybe at times the playfulness is a mere patina. There is poignancy in this: Farrugia puts the viewer in the shoes of a child who is trying to decipher the goings on in the big world around them as a harsh reality starts to reconstitute the picture before their very eyes. John's photography is quite the counterpoint to Judie's pieces.
Whereas Judie's work appears to be hopeful, notwithstanding the grim realities she may compel us to look at - one gets the sense that the artist cannot help this sentiment of hope, no matter what life throws at her - the photographic images are stark and don't shy away from despair. But it is interesting how while Judie creates beauty, John tries (and succeeds) to make beauty out of the ugliness, despair and destruction, itself an act of desperation.
In this limited exhibition, the two strands of work string together a gamut of emotions which one may choose to see as Yin and Yang or as a spectrum. Be that as it may, the strands converge in two works which are a direct collaboration between the two artists, in which Farrugia's work is directly superimposed on two of Grech's photographs, thus creating a nexus where the two visions collide and tessellate into a vision for the future.
www.judies-textile-art.co.uk
www.johngrechphotography.com
