UPFRONT aims to give Sri Lankan artists from different disciplines a platform to present and discuss their work and their industries. Its purpose is to create an open and accessible space for new audiences to actively engage with a series of artists and a variety of art forms and to create a forum for discussion and debate pertaining to the projects presented and issues relevant within the artistic community.
Following each artist presentation/screening, there will be a discussion with two moderators, after which the audience will have the opportunity to engage in a moderated dialogue with the subject.
ARTISTS
SHANAKA GALAGODA
She is a self-taught filmmaker based in Colombo. His debut short, “The Possession”, was selected for the prestigious Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 and is arguably one of the most exciting short films to come out of Sri Lanka in recent times. It centres on a reporter and her cameraman, who are given a ride by a passing military tractor. The suspenseful exchange of tools that follows highlights the differences in each character’s societal and doctrinal attitudes. Galagoda will screen and discuss his short.
RUVIN DE SILVA
He is a photographer, actor and playwright, and is the Co-Associate Artistic Director for Mind Adventures Theatre Company. One of Colombo’s most talented young photographers, he was a finalist at the Fashion Asia Awards in 2013 and was nominated for the Asian Top Fashion Photographer of the year. De Silva will discuss his passion projects, focusing on journalistic photography – his capturing of the Udappu Festival – and his fusion of the artistic and the commercial with his photography company, Fluke.
LAYLA GONADUWA
She is an interdisciplinary artist, whose concepts are inspired by the politics of human perception and her personal journey of self, through a cathartic and conceptual creative process. Her works have received critical recognition both locally and internationally and have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, two Colombo Biennnales and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Gonaduwa will discuss two projects: “A Quieter Place” which explores an intensely personal transformation through 7-years of layered paintings, poetry and prose, and “Silver Fish”, a site-specific project that emerged as part of ongoing work around the temporality of landscape and transformation of texts over time.
MODERATORS
NELUM SENEVIRATNE
She works as a consultant for UNICEF, directing a project and is producing an expository documentary on special needs education in Sri Lanka. She is a recent graduate from University College London, where she completed her dissertation on “The Relationship between Political Dissent and Contemporary Visual Art in Sri Lanka". Nelum is interested in the process of creating meaningful change for vulnerable and marginalised groups.
REHAN MUDANNAYAKE
He is a filmmaker, critic, video installation artist and founder of the film/advertising company Odyssey. His work has been screened at the MOSAIC Film Festival in Toronto (Insecxtual, Grand Jury Prize nominee, 2012), the Theertha Red Dot Gallery in Colombo (The Imprint of L.F., 2015) and the Barefoot Gallery (Elsz – Blue Scar, 2015). His most recent short, Elephant, is the first ever narrative film to focus on Colombo. Elephant has screened to full houses in Colombo (Harold Pieris Gallery, 2015 / The British Council, 2016) and Jaffna (The Archive of Contemporary Art, 2016). He is a graduate of the University of Amsterdam and the University of Kent.
Event Details
Venue: British Council Library
Time: 07.00p.m.
Entrance is FREE.
Phone 0774160323 for inquiries.
