Drawings: Chandraguptha Thenuwara & Jagath Weerasinghe
Drawings takes place as a dual exhibition of drawings by Chandraguptha Thenuwara and Jagath Weerasinghe, staged simultaneously in London and Colombo.
Thenuwara and Weerasinghe are among Sri Lanka’s foremost artists. Their artistic dialogue spans the last three decades - key years spent 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 served as an effective voice for Thenuwara and Weerasinghe, voicing complex statements to stark but courageous visual effect.
