On View

Does a chance encounter between one thing and another alter how something familiar or commonplace is otherwise seen? Can two artworks placed side by side reveal something new about each of them?

This exhibition is structured as a sequence of changing displays which bring together six encounters between artworks from the 1950s to the present.

Each display revolves around and responds to a specially chosen painting drawn from the John Keells Holdings or the George Keyt Foundation art collections. The six encounters propose playful and at times contentious comparisons between the familiar and unexpected.

Visitors are invited to return to Encounters over the course of three rotations:

Rotation 1
11 February–22 May 2022

Abdul Halik Azeez
Afro-Asian Writers’ Bureau
Aubrey Collette
Martin Wickramasinghe
Permanent Bureau of Afro-Asian Writers
Senaka Senanayake

George Keyt
Pradeep Thalawatta

Asai Rasiah
George Keyt
Richard Gabriel
Susiman Nirmalavasan

Rotation 2
22 June–13 November 2022

Abdul Halik Azeez
Afro-Asian Writers’ Bureau
Aubrey Collette
Martin Wickramasinghe
Permanent Bureau of Afro-Asian Writers
Senaka Senanayake

Firi Rahman
Gamini Ratnavira
Ismeth Raheem
Laki Senanayake

Rotation 3
8 December 2022–19 March 2023

Abdul Halik Azeez
Afro-Asian Writers’ Bureau
Aubrey Collette
Martin Wickramasinghe
Permanent Bureau of Afro-Asian Writers
Senaka Senanayake

A. Mark
George Keyt
Nelun Harasgama

George Keyt
Janani Cooray

In 2003, Cheran, a leading contemporary Tamil poet, published a poem where he described how a

“… bridge, strengthened by its burden
of a hundred thousand tales
collapses within a single tear.”

This exhibition draws its title, and curatorial impetus, from the exercise of imagining how the poem’s burden of countless tales might be conceived as an exhibition. To this end, it views the collapse of a physical structure as a tipping point that gives rise to a body of knowledge, of excessive and epic proportions, and how this excess might be displayed, arranged, catalogued and understood. From afar, this exhibition addresses the task of recording an art history in terms of an artistic output that bore witness to many narratives, episodes, and accounts of what has come to pass in Sri Lanka during its recent history. Up close, it recognises the strength of Sri Lanka’s artistic communities across several generations and the artworks that they have given form to, as the material manifestation of the poem’s ‘hundred thousand tales’. In doing so, the exhibition positions each artwork as a unique tale, seeing the potential each one possesses to tell or retell a story, depart from a story, or to remain silent. This exhibition is indebted to the countless exhibitions that have taken place over previous decades, and the efforts of many artists, curators, collectives, writers, collectors and organisations, as well as those to come.