Stunning MICAS-Skira catalogue for Reggie Burrows Hodges: Mela, the artist’s first European exhibition
Fourth MICAS-Skira publication documents over 30 new works created in Malta, including the largest canvases of Reggie Burrows Hodges’s career
The Malta International Contemporary Art Space (MICAS) has announced the publication of the catalogue for Reggie Burrows Hodges: Mela, its exhibition of new work by the internationally acclaimed painter Reggie Burrows Hodges (b. 1965, Compton, California).
Published with Skira of Milan, the catalogue is the fourth collaboration between MICAS and the leading Italian art publisher, and is on sale exclusively in Malta at the MICAS gift shop.
Mela marks Hodges’s first exhibition in Europe and documents an entirely new body of work produced during his move to Malta in 2024. Spanning over 30 paintings – including the largest canvases of his career – the exhibition and its catalogue record a sustained engagement with the island’s culture, landscape and history. The title takes its name from a word Hodges encountered repeatedly in daily Maltese life: ‘mela’, used widely to mean “so” or “well,” and typically preceding the expression of a thought or idea.
Hodges’s centrepiece alone announces the ambition of the exhibition: his Mamajamma, more than 4.5 metres tall and over 8 metres wide, is a colossal response to Caravaggio’s Beheading of St John the Baptist, a painting that Hodges encountered within the first few days of arriving in Malta, and one that proved decisive.
As MICAS Artistic Director and curator of the exhibition, Edith Devaney notes, Hodges’s deep engagement with high contrast of light and dark makes the Caravaggio connection immediately legible: his work is also, in its way, a homage to the master of Baroque.
“The story of how the exhibition came to exist is itself one of institutional trust and personal commitment. When Hodges agreed to work with MICAS, the museum was still under construction. He had not yet seen the finished galleries. Like several other artists who committed to the early programme, his participation required, a considerable leap of faith,” Devaney says.
Hodges’s works begin with a ground of black paint from which figures and environments emerge through negative space, displacing descriptive realism in favour of atmosphere, gesture and psychological presence. In Mela, this method is brought into dialogue with the Maltese context, extending his ongoing exploration of identity, memory, labour and collective experience.
MICAS executive chairperson Phyllis Muscat toasted the continuation of the institution’s bold artistic programme, a back-to-back roster of international and Maltese artists who had found inspiration in Malta and strengthened their relationship with the museum. “With this national commitment towards the furtherance of contemporary art, MICAS has brought to Malta art that has moved through the most respected institutions in the world, thanks to the national commitment towards the furtherance of contemporary art,” Muscat said. “As in the case of Reggie Burrows Hodges, we have done this not through prestige borrowing, but thanks to genuine artistic engagement.”
