Bored Peach Club, in partnership with Arthall Gozo, will be presenting Vessel to Vassal by British artist Pete Codling with Vessel to Vassal, an exhibition of drawings, prints and sculpture exploring voyage, containment and personal change. This exhibition brings together new, recent and selected earlier drawings and prints.

The gallery said that the collection reflects a personal and creative journey between Portsmouth, Malta and Gozo during several years of change, using maritime imagery, mythology and self-portraiture to explore passage, emotional containment, isolation, preservation and release.

Developed through his continuing relationship with Malta and Gozo, the exhibition brings new work into dialogue with recurring bottle imagery, selected earlier pieces and the artist’s 2010 Ark series.

At its centre is the bottle as a vessel for people, animals, angels, objects and emotions. These transparent containers may offer protection and passage, but also suggest isolation, confinement and the psychological experience of being visible without being reached.

The title Vessel to Vassal describes this unstable relationship. The vessel carries its contents, while the person or creature inside becomes subject to its protection, direction and limits. At the same time, the vessel may become servant to its cargo, burdened and defined by what it must preserve.

A substantial new charcoal drawing will respond to Sansuna, the legendary Gozitan giantess associated with carrying megaliths across the island. Rather than illustrating the folklore literally, the drawing will consider parenthood, strength, responsibility, inherited history and the act of carrying culture forward.

The exhibition is expected to include:

• New and recent charcoal drawings exploring bottles, human figures, animals, seascapes and self-portraiture

• The major Sansuna-inspired drawing

• Selected earlier bottle works and prints

• Works connected with the 2010 Ark series

• Smaller studies and personal observations

• A limited group of sculptures extending the imagery of vessels, figures and enclosed forms

The exhibition should not be advertised as containing entirely new work. The most accurate description is:

Pete Codling said, ”my bottles have never simply contained messages. They contain people, animals, angels, memories and emotions. They can preserve and protect, but they can also isolate and imprison. This exhibition reflects a period in which I have travelled repeatedly between Portsmouth and Gozo, carrying one place into another. Like any traveller, explorer or artist, I sometimes feel that I am steering my own course, while at other times I am carried by circumstance, by other people, by physical and emotional weather, and by the unpredictable currents of fate.”

The opening night of the exhibition will be on Friday, the 4th of September, at 7.30pm. The exhibition will remain open until the 7th of September.

The venue is Arthall: 8, triq Agius de Soldanis, Victoria, Gozo. Opening hours: Mornings 10am – 1pm / afternoons by appointment.

Photos: Arthall

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