Anna Calleja
Born in Malta in 1997, Anna Calleja is a multidisciplinary artist creating primarily figurative paintings, prints, and sculpture.
Her work retires to the comfort and melancholy of home, using the process of painting to create quiet moments of introspection. She looks back on her own notions of comfort to confront an anxious present and grapple with an uncertain future. Calleja’s interest lies in dualities; the tension and dissonance between comfort and melancholy, isolation and connection, love and pain.
Calleja has exhibited across the UK and abroad, at the Wignacourt Museum in Malta and at Tate St. Ives, Porthmeor Studios, and at the Mall Galleries in London, and was the recipient of a Winsor and Newton Young Artist Award at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition for her 2020 painting ‘Alone in Quarantine’.
Awards:
Winsor and Newton Young Artist Award, Second Prize, ROI Annual Exhibition 2020
Emerging Young Artist Call, ARTZ ID in collaboration with ARTPAPER and Lily Agius Gallery, 2020
C-A-S-T Residency, Helston, UK. 2019
Midas Award at the Newlyn Art Gallery and the Exchange, UK. 2019
Malta Arts Scholarship, 2017-2020
Anna Calleja Featured on BBC Spotlight about Newlyn Art Gallery’s Extraodinary Postcards in Extraordinary Times
Exhibitions:
2022
Domestic Bliss, Beaux Arts Bath
Works on Paper 4, Blue Shop Cottage, London, UK
Sea Sunset Moon: Variations on Solitude, Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta, Malta
Mara, Bureau Iniala, Valletta, Malta
2021
Anna Calleja: On Hold, New Craftsman Gallery, St. Ives, UK
Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London, UK
Homebound, solo exhibition, Palazzo de La Salle, Valletta, Malta
Launch Exhibition, Morgans, Falmouth, UK
Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London, UK
2020
Extraordinary Postcards for Extraordinary Times, Newlyn Art Gallery, UK
Falmouth Showcase, Degree Show, Falmouth University, Falmouth, UK
Interalia, Painter’s Network Southwest, @paintersnetwork_sw
Postcard Exhibition, Highgate Art Gallery, London, UK
Spring Show, The Old School Gallery, Alnmouth, UK
Celebrating Women, The Wignacourt Museum, Rabat, Malta
2019
Environments: A Tate Staff Exhibition, Tate St. Ives, UK
Tate Collective Producer at Otobong Nkanga: Ustudio, Tate St. Ives, UK
Exhibition: Anna Calleja and Will Calver, Porthmeor Studios, St. Ives, UK
Exhibition of local artists at Farsons Beerfestival, Ta Qali, Malta
Proposals for Change, Exhibition with Krijn de Koning, Falmouth, UK
Outside-In Exhibition, Falmouth, UK
Woodlane Windows Exhibition, Falmouth, UK
Tate Collective Producers Ustudio – Performance in Film by Isabel Lima, UK, 2018
Sculptural Installation for Limbo, Spazju Kreattiv, Valletta, Malta, 2016
b.1997