1974
Photography Exhibition: Meet Amelia Troubridge
Elliot Erwitt publishes Son of a bitch
Jilly Cooper writes Women & Super Women
Grayson Perry invents the mountain bike.
My parents got married.
The lost honour of Kathleen Blum written
Labour wins the election in the UK.
The year after, the UK joins the European Union
Nixon resigns
Pawl Carbonaro paints his flowers in a vase painting
William Eggleston takes a portrait of two girls on a sofa.
Cathy Newman was born.
Year of the tiger in the Chinese Calendar
A wooden cottage in Woodstock NY was built that we’d like to live in.
Jo Cox was born.
Victoria Beckham was born
Maxine Peake was born.
A woman under the influence was released, written by John Cassevetes.
Kate Moss was born.
Rachel Cusk writer moves to the UK.
Brian Eno writes Taking Tiger Mountain.
A Japanese soldier came out of the forest in Malaysia to find out world war 2 had ended 29 years ago.
I was born.
………….
I like to make lists. It helps me to get on with the things I need to do in my day. It adds to my sense of purpose. It’s maybe a reminder that today I am alive.
I started to make another list, not a to-do list this time, but instead, about the year I was born. I would wait for these things on the list to come to me in random moments. I did not go out and find them. I had little control over this list. Just as we have little control over so much of our lives.
It is by going back one finds ways of going forward. I was born in 1974. This year has kept coming up for me in random ways in the past few years. A reminder of my identity and who I am. For me, the list reminds me to be fearless with myself in all my affairs. As a woman at work, spiritually, and as a mother.
Malta provided the freedom when I was young to indulge the essence of freedom and turn it into creativity.
Such actions were deemed as rebellion at the time. However, we must challenge to evolve in life. I think my message has been clear and simple in my work. A curiosity & celebration of all humanity. I see the land and the sea that keeps us all alive, that is all powerful.
I was in Gozo at dawn one morning when I had the idea that I should become a photographer. I published my second book on Malta in 2006 in Great Britain.
For me, this was a process of looking inwards. Who am I? Half English, half Maltese. My tribe, family, rituals and stories passed down from generation to generation.
My parents met and fell in love in Malta. I know this island, for me, is about love. My father instilled that love in me as a child.
With so much change occurring in the world in the past 20 years, I find myself needing the very simple things of life as a means to ground me. I return to these things when I return to the islands.
The 1974 list comprises writers, photographers, and artists whose work I appreciate. It also comprises women I’ve met in my work. I’m fascinated by when people are born. What wider experiences in the world they have been raised with. I feel appreciation that I live in a time where I can hear the voices of so many women in our society.
………
Amelia Troubridge presents Faith – an exhibition comprised of a unique photographic archive taken over the past 27 years. Shot through analogue photography and combining reportage with portraiture, the work represents a timeline of significant socio-political moments in the history of the Maltese Islands from 1993 to the present. Faith runs until 31 January 2021 at Spazju Kreattiv, St James Cavalier, Castille Place, Valletta.
Images: Courtesy of the artist
