Tribute to Tilak and his inimitable lines
It’s the lines. Linear, geometric or curving sinuously, they are the dramatic defining feature of Tilak Samarawickrema’s work.
For the past one month, with another week still to go, the newly opened Paradise Road Saskia Fernando Gallery (PRSFG) on Galle Road is displaying the line drawings, tapestries and wire sculptures of this renowned architect, designer and artist. The uncluttered space of the Gallery is the ideal setting for these arresting works.
Arresting works: Tilak's tapestries of geometric lines and many colours. Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
Now in his early eighties, “I have virtually retired,” he says,” ‘just taking each day as it comes,” when we meet him at his home in Colombo 5 which in itself has grown to be a gallery lined with the works speaking of his evolution as an artist over six decades. Tilak’s works have been exhibited in prestigious international galleries and stores from Oslo to New York and he is glad the PRSFG, through Shanth Fernando and daughter Saskia chose to hold this present exhibition ‘Rekha’ – presenting them anew to a larger audience.
It was as an architect that Tilak trained initially at the School of Architecture at Katubedda. “Architecture was the foundation that opened the doors to art, fashion and design,” he says but the designer in him would find great freedom in Italy where he spent a hugely formative 12 years first studying urban design in Milan and then moving to Rome imbibing influences from the Renaissance to the Bauhaus. Interestingly it was here that he went back to his own cultural roots, those early doodles – his fascination with calligraphic Sinhala script taking wing. Indeed at this exhibition some of his drawings dating back to the 70’s are on show as is the video of his first animated film ‘Andare of Sri Lanka’ which notably was Italy’s entry to the Oberhausen Film Festival in Germany in 1977.
Whimsical and artful: Finely wrought wire sculptures
A fine selection of Tilak’s signature tapestries, hang at the PRSFG. They were from the era of his immensely productive collaboration with the weavers of the remote village of Thalagune tucked away in the Ududumbara hills where he gave them geometric precision and subtle and striking shades of colour to transform their traditional designs into a product so successful it found space even at the MoMA design store in New York. The Thalagune weavers are still in business now doing their own designs, the second generation taking the craft forward, he says.
Then there are those finely wrought wire sculptures. Tilak reminisces that they had long floated in his mind before he first created them with binding wire in his own studio in 2009 with his then architectural student Ahamed Shums Hibshy. “I was exploring all the time and I always wanted to turn my work into wire sculptures.” These are works that, like his drawings, inspire flights of fancy in the viewer, so whimsical and artful are the lines and interplay of shadows they create.
Tilak with Saskia Fernando at the exhibition opening
Writing of her father’s work, Tilak’s daughter Nethra encapsulates his oeuvre:“From his student days, exploring how his rapidograph could move fluidly between the geometric lines of architectural drawings and curvaceous figures, he has pushed the boundaries of each medium, expanding and often transcending its limits. His work built bridges between Sri Lanka and the world through a playful exploration of difference—of ways to facilitate convergence amidst divergence. He has danced with translation and bricolage, conjoining aesthetic forms that, on the surface, do not seem to belong.”
‘Rekha’ – a tribute to a truly distinctive artist and designer of our times is on at the PRSFG Gallery, 138, Galle Road, Colombo 3 from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. until June 2.
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