At the Malta International Contemporary Art Space, a new group exhibition places painting, landscape and a sense of belonging at its centre. Titled A New Life Force, the show brings together Kemi Onabule, Megan Rooney and Nathanaelle Herbelin, three painters whose recent work was informed by time spent on the island. The exhibition is staged inside a historic fortress setting, where limestone walls and a descent towards the sea frame the three floors of displays.

Onabule, who works from a small studio in London and draws on Greek, English and Nigerian heritage, contributes some of the biggest paintings she has made so far. Her shadowy figures move through coastal scenes that run past the edges of the canvas, suggesting a wider world beyond the frame. One 2025 oil painting, Sacred Grove, sets two figures in the foreground against a stretch of water, while a fertility figure steps into the water itself, unnoticed by the pair. The contrast between watchers and the natural world they overlook runs through her contribution.

Other works extend that feeling of being caught between places. In Here By The Sea (St. Peters), a shy figure is built up in layers and then cut back, appearing both present and absent between two rocky outcrops. View of Floriana looks from a cave towards a thick grove of trees, Landmark shows a figure stepping out of a tree, and Consumed places a figure among unfinished circular ripples. Throughout, Onabule treats Malta less as a backdrop than as a condition: an island positioned between Sicily and North Africa, fertile, exposed and hard to pin down.

Rooney's large-scale colour-driven paintings and Herbelin's votive-inspired pieces complete the hang, with Rooney's work leading the sequence and Herbelin's closing it. Onabule's paintings sit at the middle of the arrangement, a position the exhibition uses to explore containment, growth and the force of nature held within walls. The show remains on view until 31 January 2027.