homecoming/revisiting

The exhibition entitled “homecoming/revisiting - Contemporary British and Sri Lankan Printmaking” is a cross-cultural collaborative visual art project supported by Leeds Beckett University (Leeds Metropolitan University) and the University of Fine and Performing Arts, Sri Lanka. This project creates two major exhibition platforms in the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka, exhibiting print works selected from twenty-one newly graduated students from both universities in a diverse range of processes and subject matter.

Printmaking techniques were introduced to Sri Lanka during the British colonial occupation. Other than the lithographic works of local flora and fauna, the colonial artists often used printmaking techniques to create images for newspapers and later it was handed over to local craftsmen to create an extensive number of wood-block prints published in local newspapers and magazines representing the island's history. With the exception of creating images for news media, printmaking had not been a popular art making medium in Sri Lanka due to its complexity and cost. However artists such as Ranil Daraniyagala, who studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, became one of the leading printmakers in south Asia. Also in later years Professor Susiripala Malimboda, who studied printmaking in India, introduced an academic level print-making course. Since then the University of Fine and Performing Arts in Sri Lanka has been trying to develop this creating a separate department for printmaking. This project will provide an opportunity for the University of Fine and Performing Arts Sri Lanka to look at and gather influence from the well-established Leeds Beckett University's print-making department which was established in 1977 and begin a conversation between print workshops.

There is a great diversity within the work in this exhibition, representing complimentary skills, techniques and moments of western as well as eastern imagery. These young artists are eager to represent and explore their experiences of the varied world they are living in, the diverse global exchange of cultural economical and political phenomenon, while this opportunity also makes visible how artists from diverse cultural backgrounds create similar images to represent their own concerns. For instance, when Darcy Cash uses images of "shoes" as family portraits, the Sri Lankan artist S. N. W. M. S. B Wanninayake uses an image of a "shoe" as a powerful political motif. In the same way, Lyndon Wallace's prints ware influenced by Buddhist Shamb- hala, to create complex circular patterns, S. P. G. K Sewwandi borrows, images from the popular social media sites to discuss the contemporary crisis among the youth in Sri Lanka.

A range of techniques are used by these artists, from high-tech computer techniques to the traditional methods of hand-printing. The use of technology is visible within the works of British artists due to its accessibility and availability but rather craftier or handmade techniques are visible within the Sri Lankan artists work due to the cost, difficulty to find material and technical hardship. However what is important to mention here is that, when we look at these images as a collective body of work, we do not see the comfort zones of infrastructure or difficulties of material or facilities but what is visible within the work is creativity, imagination, craftsmanship and new talent.

This is a meeting place for local and international new artistic voices, broadening horizons in the sense of creating a dialogic space for educational, social and art discourses to take place. As such, this exhibition provides a platform to rethink the legacy and artistic connections which we had almost forgotten over the time.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Liz Stirling, Dr Priyantha Udagedara, and Prof Susiripala Malimboda.