Sullivan+Strumpf presents Liquid vessels, a major new body of work by Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran that marks a decisive evolution in his practice: the vessel moves to the centre.

For over a decade, Nithiyendran has been known for bold, irreverent figuration. In Liquid vessels, he returns to what he describes as the “first principles” of ceramics — the archetypal pot form — treating it not as backdrop, but as protagonist. Figures and vessels fuse. Pots balance precariously on heads, split open torsos, extend limbs and operate as prosthetic bodies. The container becomes animate.

“I have extended my interests in figuration by considering the archetypical form of the vessel as a locus for creative, personal and philosophical exploration,” Nithiyendran states.

This shift is both formal and conceptual. The vessel operates simultaneously as sacred technology, ecological metaphor and diasporic archive. Referencing long histories of ceramic exchange across Sri Lanka and South India, the works draw on maritime trade routes, inscribed potsherds and hydraulic infrastructures that once structured collective life across the region.

As Dr. Edwin Coomasaru notes, the vessel becomes “a transporter of forms of collective cultural knowledge across borders and boundaries that have continuously shifted and been subverted over deep spans of time.”

Bronze intensifies this inquiry. Cast through the lost-wax process from hand-built and wheel-thrown clay forms, the sculptures retain impressions of touch — fingerprints, seams, ruptures. Clay’s immediacy is fixed in metal. Patinas evoke glaze, wood grain and erosion, collapsing distinctions between fragility and monumentality, archaeology and speculation.

What is particularly exciting in Liquid vessels is Nithiyendran’s renewed engagement with painting. Trained initially in painting in Australia before turning primarily to sculpture, he now reactivates painterly language directly onto three-dimensional forms. A new suite of wheel-thrown vessels are painted and inscribed across their curved surfaces: gesture wraps around volume, figuration follows curvature, colour animates structure. Painting is no longer separate from sculpture, it is embedded within it.

Across the exhibition, liquid forms recur. Surfaces drip, flow and pool. Vessels recall water systems and technologies from South Asia; infrastructures of survival and collective knowledge. Mud, fire and water converge in works that feel at once ancient and newly emergent.

Liquid vessels transforms Sullivan+Strumpf’s Naarm/Melbourne gallery into an immersive sculptural environment where material performs, history destabilises and the pot becomes both monument and moving body.

This exhibition marks Nithiyendran’s most significant Australian solo presentation since 2024 and signals a powerful new chapter in his practice — one that returns to foundational forms while radically expanding their possibilities.