The Sound of You Dreaming
Paul Scerri
Solo Exhibition, 2025
Spazju Kreattiv, St James Cavalier, Valletta
17 January – 9 March 2025
Curator: Gabriel Zammit
Associate Curator: Andrew Borg Wirth
Dreams disrupt our ordinary understanding of the world. They suspend conventional notions of time and space, yet they also reveal profound personal and collective truths. In The Sound of You Dreaming, Paul Scerri explores these ideas through a new body of ceramic sculptures that draw together memory, imagination and lived experience. Developed over more than four decades of working with clay, his visual language transforms intimate recollections into forms that resonate beyond the personal.
Scerri’s artistic process shares much with the act of dreaming itself. Working with ceramic is slow, intuitive and deeply alchemical, resisting the rhythms of productivity in favour of patience and transformation. Within the studio, time seems to dissolve as instinct and material guide the making of each work.
At the heart of the exhibition is a return to memory. Revisiting his native island of Gozo, his grandparents’ abandoned home and fragments of family history, Scerri gathers traces of the past that quietly surface throughout the sculptures. Handwritten texts, concealed drawers and partially hidden objects evoke histories that remain incomplete, inviting viewers to look beyond the visible surface and enter a space where memory and imagination intertwine.
The exhibition’s title evokes the impossible desire to hear another person’s dreams—to cross the distance between one individual and another and enter a shared space of vulnerability. While this longing can never be fully realised, it is precisely within this gap that art operates. Through the transformation of earth into ceramic, and ceramic into poetic form, The Sound of You Dreaming offers a meditation on intimacy, remembrance and the imaginative possibilities that emerge where language and rational understanding fall short.
PRESS
‘Paul Scerri Blurs the Line Between Real and Surreal with His Latest Body of Work on the Nature of Dreams’ — Design Dispatch, 14 January 2025. Read more.
‘Sculpted Dreams! “The Sound of You Dreaming” Brings Ethereal Vibes to Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta from Friday’ — GuideMeMalta, 15 January 2025. Read more.
‘The Sound of You Dreaming: Solo Exhibition by Ceramicist Paul Scerri’ — Lovin Malta, 16 January 2025. Read more.
‘I Have Always Been Intrigued by Dreams’ — Times of Malta, 18 January 2025. Read more.
‘Film Screening, Poetry Performances Accompany Paul Scerri Exhibition’ — Times of Malta, 6 February 2025. Read more.
CREDITS
Production
Sound Design
Matyou Galea (voice by Kris Polidano)
Light Design
Light Design Solutions
Exhibition Design
Tracey Sammut
Project Manager
Antoine Borg Micallef
Photography and Exhibition Views
Brian Grech
Catalogue
Essays
Konrad Buhagiar & Maria Theuma
Poetry
Kris Polidano
Graphic Design
Siobhan Vassallo
English Proofreading
Lara Zammit
Maltese Editing
Aphroconfuso
Maltese Proofreading
Gabriel Grioli
Special thanks
Norbert Francis Attard, Daniel Azzopardi, Stephen Azzopardi, Rachael Blackburn, Leanne Bugeja, Lydia Busietta, Nick Cachia, Marcel Cassar, Peter Cutajar, Liana Debattista, Jeannette Fiott, Maria Eileen Fsadni, Joe Gatt, Alison Satariano, Silvana Scerri, Thomas Scerri, Keith Scicluna, Spazju Kreattiv Staff, Jeremy Vassallo, Sam Vassallo, Loranne Vella, Benjamin Zammit
Acknowledgements
Programme
The Sound of You Dreaming was presented as part of the Spazju Kreattiv Programme 2024/2025
Funded by
Arts Council Malta
Supported by
Light Design Solutions
Interior Outfitters
Valletta Contemporary Gallery
APS Bank
Saw Ltd