Dual exhibition of ‘Drawings’

Saskia Fernando Gallery and Breese Little Gallery will host a dual exhibition of drawings by Chandraguptha Thenuwara and Jagath Weerasinghe, staged simultaneously in London and Colombo during the next couple of weeks.

Titled ‘Drawings’ the exhibitions will present Thenuwara and Weerasinghe’s negotiations of this medium, investigating drawing as a site to negotiate boundaries, politics and formal agility.

Thenuwara and Weerasinghe are among Sri Lanka’s foremost artists. Their artistic dialogue spans the last three decades and are recognised as artists who have spent key years bolstering the emergence and grounding of the country’s contemporary art scene.  Having met at the University of Kelaniya in the late 1970s their interests have since run parallel with sustained exchange and mutual inspiration.

The pairing of these prolific artists considers their current approaches to drawing as a practise. Thenuwara and Weerasinghe cite publishing house Raking Leaves’ One Year Drawing Project of 2005 as a turning point for their changing attitudes to the medium.  Both regard the project’s premise of an exchange of drawings between four leading artists as a period of substantial reconsideration of the medium in their own work.  

The initiative opened a realisation of the potential, relevance and power of drawing beyond their previous regard for preparatory sketches. The discovery of this new creative discipline has servedas an effective tool for Thenuwara and Weerasinghe, voicing complex statements to stark but courageous visual effect.

Thenuwara and Weerasinghe have exhibited extensively and participated in international artists’ camps and workshops throughout their careers. Thenuwara is the Director of the Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts, Colombo, which he founded in 1993. Weerasinghe is the Director of the Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology, University of Kelaniya, Colombo.  He founded Theerta International Artists Collective in 2000.

Josephine Breese and Saskia Fernando curated Contemporary Art from Sri Lanka 2011 at Asia House in March 2011. The exhibition was the first international showcase of Sri Lanka’s contemporary artists since the end of the civil war in 2009.