The One Year Drawing Project: May 2005 – October 2007 is easily one of the most beautiful books you’ll see this year. Gorgeously bound in thick brown paper to resemble an envelope, it is nothing less than a work of art – and its contents are only more so. Within its pages are over 200 impeccably reproduced paintings – complete with any notes the artist may have left on the back. Created over the course of 29 months by artists Muhanned Cader, Thamotharampillai Shanaathanan, Chandraguptha Thenuwara and Jagath Weerasinghe, the collection represents nothing less than a landmark project for Sri Lanka.
The book marks the debut of a new independent publisher - Raking Leaves. Based in London and Colombo, this non-profit organisation is perhaps best described as curatorial project. At its head is curator Sharmini Pereira. Her focus is on turning contemporary art projects - each involving artists of international significance - into books. Sharmini believes that this new medium has the potential to change the way we see art – making it more affordable and as a result correspondingly more accessible to art lovers all over the world. This is portable art, free of the restrictions of capital intensive, gallery locked exhibitions. In a nutshell, these are the kind of drawings that you and I can actually take home.
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The One Year Drawing Project began in 2005 when Muhanned sent a drawing to Chandraguptha at Sharmini’s behest. Chandraguptha then “responded” with a drawing of his own – only this time he mailed it to Shanaathanan, who then mailed his own response to Jagath. Each artist restricted himself to drawings on A4 sized sheets, but took the narrative where he pleased, with only the single drawing that came before for inspiration. As a result, the collection meanders pleasingly, each artist seeming to carry forward only a few chosen elements from the painting before. Accompanying the book is a timeline that offers the barest of contexts to the drawings in the book. It lists events of international importance, such as the declaration of the Nobel Prize winners, events of national importance such as the row over P-TOMs, and finally events of personal importance, such as the day that Chandraguptha’s son turned 6.
Beginning with its name, the project has embraced all the contradictions of living and working in modern Sri Lanka. “Time became somewhat irrelevant,” says Sharmini, explaining that the process itself was all. A somewhat unreliable postal system and the hectic schedules of the artists themselves stretched 12 months into 29, but 52 exchanges later we have The One Year Drawing Project.
Also being launched this month is another Raking Leaves publication – Pearls by Simryn Gill. The book is a photographic record of the artist’s ongoing bead-making project. Begun in 1999 in Sydney by the Indian born artist, the book features over 60 sets of beads – each created painstakingly from lines torn from specific volumes. Hence, on page 94 you will find a gorgeous necklace made up of beads created from pages from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, while on page 116 beads made from The Beano Books of 1992 and 1994 make for fat, colourful strands.
Be it The Atlas of the World or A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, Gill converts the entire novel into her beads. Only two short pieces of writing by the artist punctuate the book.
Both books will be launched on August 25 at Barefoot at a special pre-publication price of Rs. 3000 per book. A limited number of special editions will sell for considerably more, and will include original works by the artists. |
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