City of Art presents BLOW-UP, a major new exhibition exploring the transformative relationship between art, fashion, and cinema from the 1960s to today. Opening at Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta, on 8 November 2025, the exhibition examines how, over the past six decades, image-making has evolved from documenting reality to actively shaping and distorting it.
Taking its title from Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 masterpiece Blow-Up, the exhibition reflects on how cinema once mirrored the world around it, but now, in an era of hyper-visual culture, images themselves define our perception of truth. Across four distinct rooms, the exhibition juxtaposes iconic artefacts of the 1960s with contemporary works, posing Antonioni’s enduring question: is all that remains of the real that which resists being seen?
The BLOW-UP exhibition brings together works and artefacts by, or featuring, Helmut Newton, Christian Dior, Andrew Grima, Andy Warhol, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Joana Biarnés, David Hockney, and Sylvia Plath, among others – a list which also includes Maltese artists.
This is City of Art’s second multidisciplinary project to be presented at Spazju Kreattiv, following the success of its previous collaboration.
EXHIBITION OPENING HOURS
TUES–FRI: 09:00 AM–09:00 PM
SAT–SUN: 10:00 AM–09:00 PM
MONDAYS CLOSED
SATELLITE EVENT
8 1/2 by Federico Fellini
Date and Time: Sunday, 4th January, 2026
Venue: Spazju Kreattiv Ċinema
Language: Italian
Guido is a film director, trying to relax after his last big hit. He can’t get a moment’s peace, however, with the people who have worked with him in the past constantly looking for more work. He wrestles with his conscience, but is unable to come up with a new idea.
While thinking, he starts to recall major happenings in his life, and all the women he has loved and left.
Tickets Here
City of Art is an art platform bringing together a collective of visual and performance artists, curators and researchers. The interdisciplinary ensemble of curator-artists have assembled with the sole purpose of creating multimediatic events, initiatives and programmes that are research-based, curatorial and collaborative. Their intention is to invite contemporary artists to engage with art historical references, concepts and individuals, to revisit the past through contemporary gestures.
Lucia Micallef founded CITY OF ART in collaboration with Andrew Borg Wirth, Gillian Zammit and Luke Azzopardi in 2023.