Deciphering the abstract of the Gozitan landscape

In British artist’s Jamie F’s words, “artists are the archaeo­logists of the future tense extracting meaning from the very edges of reality”. 
His exhibition of photographs at Arthall zooms into the geo­logy of Gozo, creating abstracted landscapes out of microcosmic features that suddenly stand out as valleys, crevasses, outcroppings and lakes. 
We tend to walk upon these habitats, not giving a care about the beauty in the colour, texture and meanderings of formations beneath our feet that took millions of years to take shape. 

There is a sense of fragile solidity in Jamie F’s work, a monu­mental documentation of habitats amid the realm of fossilised limestone. This intimate architecture of the land sings and resonates, inviting us to be close and personal, while reimagining possible narratives and adding more legends to an island that flourishes in them. 
In these works, one imme­diate­ly notices, with the exception of mosses and lichens, the striking absence of flora and fauna. The only flow is that of puddles or rivulets of water; otherwise, time stands still as geology compartmentalises it not in hours and days but in centuries and millennia. These natural configurations...