MICAS is delighted to present the MICAS in Conversation series as part of its programming vision towards fostering new ideas and experiences promoting contemporary art.

For the MICAS in Conversation series, art critic and curator Rajesh Punj interviews a selection of Maltese and international artists on the involving effect of space on their art practice against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and its implications.

London-based artist Conrad Shawcross is the first artist to participate in this series of conversations.

Creating works based on an acute and creative interest in the sciences and philosophy, Conrad Shawcross takes the advances of knowledge, these ideas as equations, and transforms them into material matter. Inventing artworks of anatomical beauty based on the fragile and fantastic elemental and structural complexities of the natural and man-made world, Shawcross sees the substance of historical scholarly thought as warranting further investigation within the domain of the arts. His creative use of automatic drawing, kinetic sculptures and ‘mechanical montages’ re-explores physical and metaphysical ideas that have lain dormant for decades.     

MICAS is a Government of Malta infrastructural legacy project for the Culture and the Arts sector. MICAS will be realised through state funded restoration of historical fortifications and its galleries will be delivered in 2023. This project is part-financed by the European Union under the European Regional Development Fund – European Structural and Investment Funds 2014-2020.