#15 | Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran
LoveArt is pleased to present the fifteenth iteration of our nano project space, Love[f]Art, with a project by Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran.
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran is a Sri Lankan-born Sydney based, Nithiyendran explores global histories and figurative languages, particularly in relation to idolatry, monumentality, gender, race, and religiosity. He draws upon South Asian iconography, merging traditional forms with contemporary materials. Though best known for his unorthodox ceramic sculptures, his material practice extends to bronze, concrete, neon, LED, and fibreglass.
In-conversation with Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran available via Apple Podcasts here or Vimeo below.
EXHIBITION INFO
The installation includes a series of three large, hand-built ceramic wall masks and a series of miniature bronze faces mounted to the walls. Masks have been recurring motifs within my practice. I’m interested in their layered, multi-regional histories as well as their abilities to function as mechanisms of power, concealment, and polymorphism— in ritual, performance, or protest.
In Sri Lanka, Yakka masks have played crucial roles within ritual performance. They have embodied and reflected spirits, deities, demons while being tools for storytelling, healing, and exorcism. I have always been drawn to their ‘magic’. They have been perceived to bridge the human and the ‘otherworldly’ and other elements beyond reason.
Despite this legacy and vernacular function, my first encounter with these objects were in the context of tourism. It was 1999. I was a ten year old child returning to Sri Lanka for the first time since my family’s migration to Sydney from Colombo in 1989. I recall my base attraction to the imagination, riotous colour, heightened expressions and intricate craftsmanship of these objects. I imagined wearing them.
I have made a body of ceramic masks that channel the legacy of these forms…forms which have been circulated in contexts of ethnographic display and cultural tourism outside their original, ritual functions. I see these new works as intensely polychromatic props or tools that may be or assist in the creation of chaotic avatars of contemporary hybridity. They have bulging eyes, sprawling tongues and startled or highly engaged expressions. Despite their hyperbole, performativity or even absurdity, I intend for them to sit comfortably within the aesthetic register I have cultivated over the last ten years of sculptural practice while also engaging with the broad cultural legacies I have described.
Courtesy the Artist and Sullivan + Strumpf.
LOVE[f]ART #15 | Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran In-Conversation
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nithiyendran lives and works in Sydney. In 2011, he graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) and Bachelor of Arts from the University of New South Wales, followed by an Master of Fine Arts from the same institution in 2013. Selected solo exhibitions include Idols of Mud and Water, Eastside Projects (Birmingham, 2024); Avatar Towers, Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, 2021); Earth Deities, Dark Mofo Festival (Hobart, 2020) and Mud Men, National Gallery of Australia (Canberra, 2016). Selected group exhibitions include Pop South Asia, Sharjah Art Foundation (2022) and The National: New Australian Art, Carriageworks (2017). His work can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney; The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne and the Shepparton Art Museum.
Nithiyendran is represented by Sullivan + Strumpf.
https://sullivan-strumpf.myshopify.com/products/ramesh-monograph