In The Open | Trevor Borg & Paul Wilson

Trevor Borg is an artist and academic from Malta. He lectures at the University of Malta and his work has been exhibited and can be found in various countries. Trevor obtained his PhD from the University of Leeds. Through his artistic practice he often explores aspects concerning place, territory, boundaries and textuality.

Trevor’s practice constitutes drawing, painting, sculpture, installations, photography and film. Some of his work is based on collecting in its various forms including objects, anecdotes, photographs, footage, experiences and sounds. Through his practice he juxtaposes the past with the present and the poetic with the political. Trevor’s work has been exhibited in various countries including Malta, UK, Austria, Belgium, The Netherlands, France, Spain and Germany.

Paul Wilson is a researcher, typographer and writer whose work explores the intersections of language, landscape, community and communication. His current research involves the production of designed narratives of community and place and, in particular, investigates the potential for critically-engaged typographies and language-acts, focusing on sites of class experience and situated knowledge at moments or points of change or transition.

Much of his work orbits ideas and ideals of utopianism found in manifestations of the utopian action, and has resulted in a broad range of activities: surveying the noticeboards found in the interior landscapes of Working Men’s Clubs; mapping the route of the march which marked the closure of Britain’s last deep coal mine; exploring the post-Brexit significance of the Esperanto-English dictionary held in Keighley Library, West Yorkshire. He is a Lecturer in the School of Design at the University of Leeds.

Con/Texts

A series of 20 photographic images.

The exhibition of new work is determined by an enquiry into the significance of texts and their position within two distinct places.

Keighley is a town and civil parish within the metropolitan borough of Bradford in the U.K., with a population of just under ninety thousand within the town area and 51,500 in the town itself, Keighley stands largely unremarkable. Like much of West Yorkshire, the past of the place is defined through a role in the nation's industrial history, particularly the infrastructures of textile production.

Malta is a small island in the Mediterranean Sea with a unique and fascinating history which imbricates numerous cultures within a very restricted patch of land. The island which is located at the southern part of Europe spans over an area of 316 square kilometers. Along the centuries it has been colonised by various peoples and all the influences left a lasting legacy which is very much ingrained in the island’s bricolage milieu including its language. The national language is Maltese and it constitutes a mix of Semitic, Romance (Italian) and English vocabulary written in Latin script.

Is it possible to reveal much or any of this history from a contemporary excavation of the town's textual surfaces? For Borg and Wilson, the new work allows for a combination of approaches which is built on their common interests in text and place.