Any reckless intruder into the secret rooms created by Frederick Carabott for his nameless drawings runs the risk of remaining a mesmerised captive, or, if made of more resilient bre, emerging with all previous notions of rational human behaviour shaken to their foundations. While continuing in his steady development as an exciting new exponent of the expressive line, Carabott has bravely persisted in the unrewarding stance of scrutiny and analysis of which his drawings are so strong a testimony. A broader, more sweeping perspective of social attitudes and necessarily private instincts is laid bare in this riveting collection of drawings.
Golden opportunities lost through a wasteful inability to take decisions, un- even combat with unknown adversaries, a compulsion to proceed to the abyss of our own choice, these are only a few of the family-entertainments promised at the shilling luna-park which Frederick Carabott has slyly enticed us to enter. Blindly intent on self-destruction, his creatures out the laws of physics or survey a future of bleak prospects. There is little doubt that the artist has gratuitously trapped his audience (by their very act of viewing these works) into an admission of complicity in the proceedings.
At a time when much lip-service is paid to the sanctity of communication, the actual state of this elusive phenomenon does little to cheer the thinking artist. Television coverage of famines, uprisings or nuclear disasters is soon enough swamped by yet more episodes of interminable soap-operas whose major distinction lies in their e ortless facility in spawning sequels to order. While the media stagnate in their mission of churning out opiates, Frederick Carabott has made it his thankless duty to help us remember.
Dennis Vella