It’s impossible to look at contemporary artist Pradeep Thalawatte’s new exhibition “Day 2 Day” and not be reminded of Andy Warhol.
In the 1960s, Warhol used mundane American brands like the Campbell’s Tomato Soup can and Coca-Cola bottle in his silk-screens. Today, Thalawatte uses everyday Sri Lankan brands such as Sooriya matchstick boxes and Lifebuoy soap packages as the backdrop for his images.
Similar to Warhol, these brands are deeply familiar to their audiences and become almost iconographic in a gallery setting. Like Warhol, the work seems to offer a provocative commentary on mass production and consumerism that influences so many aspects of modern life.
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| Pradeep Thalawatte |
The 29-year-old Thalawatte, however, is hesitant to wax philosophical on the deeper meaning behind his work. He doesn’t mention Warhol or any other artists for that matter when speaking about it, nor does he use artists’ buzzwords like “urbanization,” or “postmodern”.
“I try to make good visuals in terms of colour and texture,” he explained. “Some people here produce art for the market. I’m producing what I want. It’s not necessarily a philosophy as much as it is good arrangement or taste.”
The “Day 2 Day” exhibition, now being held at the Theertha Red Dot Gallery until December 17, represents a progressive departure from Colombo’s gallery scene. Not only does the work utilize unconventional materials—arrack bottle caps, shampoo packages, ointment containers—the introspective subject matter is also distinct.
Thalawatte presents bright, monotone prints of him and his friends engaged in animated conversation or sitting on a couch together. The images are as mundane as the products they overlay, but together they create an intensely personal and intimate portrait of the artist.
“The items chosen for the background in my work are mass produced and mass used items, and the images that are represented are individuals with whom I tend to associate very closely,” said Thalawatte. The works presented in the exhibition are a way to preserve and celebrate the everyday experience of a young artist.
“Nowadays, you can find elements of unique materials and subject matter in some galleries,” said Lalith Manage, an artist as well as artist manager for Theertha International Artists Collective, of which Thalawatte is a member.
“But in Pradeep’s case it is a conscious attempt to create a significant change from what could be seen very generally as normal gallery fare. It’s a conscious decision. His work is setting the trend in the art scene and art market, rather than following the trends,” said Manage.
Other pieces in the exhibition have a feeling of adolescent innocence and romance, such as the piece entitled “Hello? Is it Me?” Using foam alphabet blocks made as children’s toys, Thalawatte created a large-scale wall hanging with the lyrics from the Lionel Ritchie song spelled out.
In another piece, “Apekesha: Kalak Evamen”, Thalawatte utilizes video stills from the classic movie of the same name, showing the two lovers singing and dancing with one another while a print of Thalawatte and his friends has been superimposed over it.
Thalawatte’s biography is unexpectedly traditional for an artist whose work expands the boundaries of contemporary Sri Lankan art. He grew up in Ratnapura, where his father and mother own a grocery store and where there was little if any exposure to art outside of the school classroom.
“I didn’t see any artists, how they were living or working,” said Thalawatte. “But my mother says I was always trying to draw on everything.” Thalawatte said he was eager to finish school and move to Colombo, a city where he could interact with other artists and exchange ideas. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts with a concentration on painting before moving on to the National Design Centre, where he studied graphics, jewellery, textiles, and interior design.
In 2007, Thalawatte received his undergraduate degree from the Beaconhouse National Universit y in Lahore, Pakistan, where he was able to interact with an international crowd of artists and picked up a love for Sufi music.
When he returned to Sri Lanka, Thalawatte joined the non-profit Theertha International Artists Collective, an organization of like-minded people, many of whom live and work together. The eight-year-old non-profit group aims to give support to and publicize Sri Lanka’s contemporary art scene through workshops, education, and development programmes.
To date, the collective has also managed to bring artists from countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Kuwait, Indonesia, Britain, Argentina, Singapore, Sweden, and Nigeria to work in Sri Lanka.
The creation of the Red Dot Gallery was intended to fill a particular vacuum in the Sri Lankan art scene, according to the gallery’s literature.
“In Sri Lanka, there are no galleries that can negotiate on behalf of artists, promote and present them to collectors and new art audiences or seek opportunities for the betterment of artists. Instead, what exists is a primitive retail system of art selling where quality or greatness of a work rests merely on the single criterion [of] how well a given work of art sells.”
The result is that the Sri Lankan art community has grown in size and sophistication in recent years, but they have little infrastructure to depend on to publicize or support their work.
But exhibitions like Thalawatte’s “Day 2 Day” are a part of the artist collective’s broader objective to challenge the existing aesthetics, methodologies, and ideologies around contemporary art in Sri Lanka.
“Thalawatte’s work represents the future direction of art that would have much absorption in consumer culture, globalization, identity and multi-national business of popular icon making,” said curator Anoli Perera. “However, in many ways, that future seems to have already arrived insofar as the youth everywhere are concerned.” |
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