Exhibition: Echoes of What Never Was

Echoes of What Never Was invites the viewer into an imagined world where memory becomes uncertain and unstable. In this body of work, David Debono explores the phenomenon of false memories, also known as confabulations, a subject first examined by Pierre Janet and later expanded upon by Sigmund Freud. These are recollections that feel vividly real yet are partially or entirely fabricated by the mind. Rather than presenting memory as deception, Debono approaches it as a fragile and shifting terrain, shaped by emotion, time, and imagination.

The predominantly ochre-based palette imbues the compositions with a nostalgic quality, as though the scenes belong to a distant, half-remembered past. Drapery caught in gentle gusts of wind recurs throughout many of the works, acting as a quiet metaphor for the passage of time and moments of stillness, introspection, and unspoken thought. Domestic interiors, familiar rooms, chairs, curtains, and everyday gestures such as undressing, sleeping, ground the works in the ordinary.

Yet these scenes are never fully anchored in reality. Some compositions verge on the surreal, evoking the logic of dreams rather than lived experience. Figures often appear as silhouettes, with faces blurred or obscured, their identities slipping from view. Debono’s painterly and deliberately undefined execution further dissolves clarity, heightening the sensation of inhabiting a dream, or perhaps someone else’s memory, where what is remembered, imagined, or forgotten remains unresolved, because perhaps, it never was.