Nigel Baldacchino is an architect by profession, who also however actively produces music and works with photography, along with other, less frequently recurring interests. He currently works at AP Valletta as an architect, while developing his own artistic practice in parallel. His Bachelors dissertation contemplated the common ground and interplay between the perception and organisation of sound (music) and that of space (architecture) respectively.
Apart from several other architectural projects, Baldacchino notably occupied main roles in design teams for two major museum projects (among other projects) over the past three years, such as MUŻA & the St. John’s Co-Cathedral Museum. Also within the realm of spatial design, in 2018 Baldacchino has designed the comprehensive setup for NISĠA: Storja Kontemporanja, curated by Sandro Debono and Irene Biolchini, portraying a series of narratives tying modern and contemporary Maltese art.
In 2012, Baldacchino represented Malta in BOZAR EXPO: Sense of Place, an international collective photography exhibition curated by Liz Wells. Other participants in the latter exhibitions included Massimo Vitali (IT) and Andreas Gursky (DE) alongside a chosen photographer from each European country. The exhibition was documented in an extensive published catalogue. Other notable photography exhibitions include In Transit (2017), a collective exhibition that travelled around Europe from the NRW Forum in Dusseldorf to Stadskantoor and Leewarden; and VIVA: Inside the Fragment (2017) at Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta.
Nigel Baldacchino has recently joined the Oliver Gordon Gallery as a resident photographer. As from 2018, a number of Baldacchino’s prints, together with a video done for Rhythms of Vision have been included in the National Collection (MUŻA). A selection of photographs from two ongoing series was published in a book by EDE books as part of their Photo Book series.
In 2014, taking part in the Fawwara Cancer Project, Baldacchino designed a number of audio installations and designed the eventual poetry book kull flgħaxija kif mal-għabex tnin u tmut saħħet il-jum by Glen Calleja. In 2014 Baldacchino also ventured briefly into academic writing, contributing a paper titled Relative Authenticity: Abstraction and the Digital Domain to Antae Journal.
Regarding music, Baldacchino started making music and learning production in 2011 through his musical project Fastidju, developing rough musical and written ideas with local producers such as Mario Sammut (Cygna). The project eventually developed into a band that performed several times around the island and released a self-titled album in 2014 (fully funded by the Malta Arts Fund).
Working with different producers and musicians throughout the Fastidju project, Nigel Baldacchino soon started learning to produce his own music. This led to a performance in a cave together with renowned experimental musician Aaron Dilloway, along with a number of soundtracks composed, produced and designed for local theatre performances and art video pieces. Soundtracks include videos such as Adrian Abela’s 4.1868 The Theory of Heat and SONUS: The sound of sonnets and the paper memory machine. Theatre performances include Teatru Santwarju’s LIMBUS and Rebecca Camilleri/Nicola Rayworth’s S-S-Spaces.
In April 2019 Baldacchino is about to also publish Soon out of Context, a book composed of couplings of his own writing together with images summoned from archived publications online. The book shall be published by Unsolicited Press in Portland, Oregon. In 2019 Nigel Baldacchino also plans to finalise a music release, launching a new solo project.