For the artists at CoCA, the city of Colombo itself is a great, entirely underutilized exhibition space. Not only do they envision art installations, displays and performances in public spaces, they’re looking at ways to reinvent mundane daily objects such as seats, lighting, walls and buildings so that they serve both as artistic creations and practical designs. Among the members of CoCA (Collective of Contemporary Artists) an extraordinary diversity of skills and interests are represented. At their launch last week, photographers, painters, filmmakers, performers, designers, sculptors, illustrators and graffiti artists were among those who provided glimpses of their work in progress.
 |
 |
The work on display is the outcome of an interesting series of collaborations, with artists bringing their diverse inspirations and skills to combined projects across a range of media. CoCA was first formed as part of a Goethe Institut project titled ‘Art Needs Space’ with the intent of providing young, local artists with a stage of their own.
“It was a response to the lack of cultural spaces available to artists of different disciplines in Sri Lanka and in Colombo especially,” says Anouska Hempel, Project Manager, Art Needs Space. She says they wanted to recruit artists and encourage them to seek out alternative cultural spaces, to work collaboratively and to make art happen in public spaces. She’s well pleased with the results, particularly with the project which brought three or more artists together.
The Goethe Gate Party, held last week, was the group’s first public show. The pieces on display had been built with public urban spaces in mind. The completed versions of these will be provided with a special platform at the Colombo Art Biennale in 2012, thanks to a collaborative effort with the Colombo Art Biennale and the Goethe Institut.
A festival in November is also on the cards with more ideas for installations around Colombo and roadmaps directing people to the multiple spaces the installations will be displayed in. “The first target of CoCA is to actually put art out there so that people will constantly encounter it,” says Suda Shanmugaraja, art facilitator of the group.
“The idea of the Goethe Institut is to look out for available spaces in Colombo which can be used for art. There’s always a creative way of finding spaces to create art. There has been an opening of the public space during the past few years since the war is over. The public space has been demilitarized and is not that strictly overlooked by security any longer,” explains Björn Ketels, Director of the Goethe Institut, Sri Lanka. “There is new opportunity within the urban space for doing something and I think it’s all about finding out how to use this now existing framework which opens itself and to use it as an artist, for performance, for visual arts, for installations and film screenings.”
Currently in the group are Maya Bastian, Chinthaka Thenuwara, Poornima Jayasinghe, Danushka Marasinghe, Deneth Piumakshi, Nadeeka Tharangani, Aruna Priyantha, Sagadevan Dayalan, Lekha Edirisinghe, Chamara Wijeysinghe, Mika Tennekoon, Pramith Geekiyanage, Pathum Egodowatta and Suda Shanmugaraja.
Anyone who wants to create art in urban spaces is invited to actively participate in weekly meetings, collaborate with other artists and bring new ideas to the group.
The public can participate by joining CoCA’s Facebook group ‘Fans of CoCA’ and following CoCA’s activities on its website (http://www.coca.lk/). In addition, if anyone has spaces that are visible to the public and wish to turn it into a work of art, or if they wish to facilitate art for the public, they can contact CoCA for more information.
|
E-mail
