Matthew Attard
Matthew Attard (Malta, 1987) was the artist who represented the Maltese Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale with the project “I WILL FOLLOW THE SHIP”, commissioned by the Malta Arts Council and co-curated by Elyse Tonna and Sara Dolfi Agostini.
His artistic practice investigates images as social and cultural constructs. Matthew is deeply interested in situating his work within the field of contemporary drawing through a multimedia approach that highlights the versatile, performative and temporal nature of drawing. His interest in understanding the gaze as a form of drawing — in its perceptual, physiological and cultural dimensions — was central to his practice-based PhD research at the Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, funded by the Malta Arts Scholarship programme.
Raised in Malta, in 2009 he moved to Venice, where he collaborated with the Collezione Peggy Guggenheim and the United States Pavilion at the 2009 and 2011 Art Biennales. He later returned to Malta, where in 2018 he obtained a Master of Research from the Department of Digital Arts at the University of Malta. He first exhibited his work in a double solo exhibition organised in 2014 at Galleria Michela Rizzo in Venice. Since then, he has exhibited in Venice, Rome, Valletta, Genoa, London, Beijing and Los Angeles, among other cities.
In 2017 he was selected for the third edition of the Biennale “Le Latitudini dell’Arte” at Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, while in 2018 he received the Premio Under 30 Euromobil at Arte Fiera in Bologna. He was selected three times to exhibit in “Ten Artists to Watch” at the Los Angeles Centre for Digital Art and in 2019 was invited to take part in Artissima Telephone at the OGR Torino. In 2021 he was shortlisted for the Lumen Prize. “Rajt ma rajtx… naf li rajt” was one of Matthew’s major solo exhibitions, curated by Elyse Tonna at Valletta Contemporary in 2021. In 2022 he was commissioned to produce “Here’s How I Did Not See What You Wanted Me To See” as part of the digital residency OPEN at Blitz, curated by Sara Dolfi Agostini. In 2023 he presented the solo exhibition “Ship of Fools” at Galleria Michela Rizzo in Venice.
In 2025 he presented “segni di rotta” at Galleria Michela Rizzo and, in October 2025, inaugurated “The Ship (Unseen)”, curated by Elyse Tonna, at the Palazzo dell’Inquisitore in Birgu, Malta.
