COLLECTOR PROFILE | PROFESSOR LARS WALDORF

 

Professor Lars Waldorf and Dr Nilanjana Premaratna’s approach to collecting art is shaped by the need to create public engagement and generate conversations around politics and human rights.

 

Lars Waldorf, Professor of Law at Northumbria University in the UK, has spearheaded groundbreaking collaborative ventures at the intersection of the law and fine arts. Partnering with choreographer and dancer Mahesh Umagiliya, as well as VisAbility, Waldorf has led two action-research initiatives in Sri Lanka. These projects merge inclusive dance, rights awareness and legal empowerment for disabled individuals.

His wife, Nilanjana Premaratna, a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Newcastle University, brings her expertise in arts and peacebuilding to the forefront. Through her work, including collaborations with the theatre troupe Jana Karaliya, Premaratna champions the role of the arts in fostering peace and social cohesion.


Professor Waldorf speaks to us about the exhibitions they curated, the patronage of young artists, and the role collectors play in shaping conversations on pivotal topics.

 

[Left to Right] Works by Krishanth Kathuramalai, Suntharam Anojan, Pushpakanthan Pakkiyarajah, Fathima Rukshana, Chandraguptha Thenuwara, Pala Pothupitiya, Mano Prasath, Muvindu Binoy, Hansika Herath, T.P.G. Amarajeewa, and Gayan Prageeth

 

 

 

What is your earliest memory of art, and what led you to start collecting it?

My Mom would read me Winnie-the-Pooh, so my first encounter was probably EH Shepard’s marvellous drawings of Pooh and Piglet chasing their own snowy footsteps in the hope it was a Heffalump. My Mom also passed on to me her passion/mania for collecting art and art pottery.

 

 

Is there a particular type or style of art you collect?

Nila and I mostly collect contemporary, abstract Sri Lankan art – with a political edge. She has also persuaded me to surround ourselves with more hopeful images.  

 

 

 

Chandraguptha Thenuwara, 2021, Untitled II, Ink on Paper, 21 x 30 cm

 

 

 

What sparked your interest in Sri Lankan art?

When I first arrived in Sri Lanka in 2017, Malathi de Alwis spent an evening introducing me to T. Shanaaathanan’s The Incomplete Thombu, Jagath Weerasinghe’s Shrine of the Innocents, and Pushpakanthan Pakkiyarajah’s drawings. I was lucky enough to get to know Pushpakanthan when I lived in Batticaloa and have been a huge admirer ever since. I took Nila to see his Disappearance exhibition at Saskia Fernando Gallery for one of our first dates. She reciprocated by introducing me to Pala Pothupitiya.

 

 

What would you say has influenced your perception and appreciation of art?

Bunking off! At university, I used to skip contract law to sit in on art and architecture lectures. Learning from others! I have learned so much about contemporary Sri Lankan art from Sharmini Pereira’s Raking Leaves books, Sasanka Perera’s Artists Remember, the Artful Resistance catalogue, Mariah Lookman’s Tonight No Poetry Will Serve, Colomboscope, gallery talks (at Saskia Fernando Gallery, Barefoot Gallery, and Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art), and lots of conversations with artists.

 

(Right) The A to Z of Conflict, Published by Raking Leaves, (Left) Artwork featured in the publication - Arjuna Gunarathne, 2015, India, Watercolour on Wasli paper

 

 

Your collection is not limited to the space within your home. Can you elaborate on it for our readers?

We don’t have enough wall space and, more importantly, we wanted the art – and artists – to enjoy a wider audience. So, we have made long-term loans of resonant art works by Arulraj, Gayan Prageeth, and Pushpakanthan Pakkiyarajah to the American Institute for Lankan Studies, Amnesty International, and the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (which already had an important collection thanks in part to Radhika Coomaraswamy).

 

 

You aND Nila curate exhibitions with the works in your art collection. Can you share your experience of curating with us?

There was such a remarkable outpouring of art and creativity during the Aragalaya/Porattam/Struggle and we wanted to showcase some of that as a way of making UK audiences more aware of Sri Lanka’s multiple political, economic, social, and legal struggles, as well as its engaged arts scene. We had never curated before but happily our universities (Essex and Newcastle) provided funding and two Sri Lankan community arts organizations in London, Agora and Vimbam, partnered with us. In July 2023, the exhibition Artful Struggles 2023: Contemporary Art from Sri Lanka – and related talks and film screenings – took place at Harrow Arts Centre in London. We brought Sujith Rathnayake over to London to talk about the GotaGoGama Art Gallery and to exhibit new works about post-Aragalaya repression. The exhibition drew from our collection but also included works generously loaned by Saskia Fernando Gallery, the Home/Land exhibition (courtesy of T.Shanathanan and Deborah McFarlane), Nayanahari Abeynayake, Jasmine Nilani Joseph, Poornima Thenuwara, Chandragupta Thenuwara, and Sujith Rathnayake. 

 

 Artful Struggles 2023: Contemporary Art from Sri Lanka, Harrow Arts Center, London (2023)

 

Works featured in Artful Struggles 2023 : (Left) Muvindu Binoy, 2022, Death of a Regime, Giclée Print on Archival Photo Paper, 79 x 63 cm, Edition of 5

(Right) Hema Shironi, 2020, Hidden Blur Families 1, Thread on Canvas, 15 x 15 cm

 

 

We are presenting a new exhibition – Artful Struggles 2024 – this summer at Gateshead Library with support from GemArts, a community South Asian arts organization in northeast England. It will feature more work from Sri Lankan artists based in the UK, including Kavan Balasuriya and Kalani Wilson. Finally, we are doing a virtual version of Artful Struggles that will be hosted on ICES’s digital Museum of Memory and Coexistence.

 

 

Please share with our readers your approach to curating.

We try to make the Artful Struggles exhibitions as diverse and inclusive as possible – in terms of medium, style, artists, and struggles. But we face real constraints in terms of exhibition space and resources. In fact, part of our reason for collecting is so we don’t have to deal with the expense and hassle of transporting and insuring too much loaned art. Another curating consideration is that our exhibitions have to be appropriate for all ages as we want them to take place in community centres and libraries that are more accessible to the general population.

 

 

There must be some interesting insights into the changing political landscape of Sri Lanka that you must have picked from the artworks you have engaged with (If yes, would you be able to share them with us.)

Chandraguptha Thenuwara’s annual exhibition commemorating Black July helps document the country’s changing politics. Even more importantly, it captures what remains sadly unchanging: impunity.

 

Installation view: Delusion, Saskia Fernando Gallery, Colombo (2023)

 

 

For last  July’s exhibition, Thenu connected past and present impunity in his drawing on the floor at the SFG entrance. We were generously given permission to trace  it before it was erased and will include that memory of violence in Artful Struggles 2024.

 

 

What compels you to collect the work of emerging artists?

Artistically, being impressed by their talent. Personally, being able to help give them and their work some more exposure. Practically, being more able to afford their work.

 


Chathurika Jayani, 2021, Dreamscape 6, Acrylic, corrugated board, woollen thread & handmade paper on canvas, 61 x 40 cm

 

 

How has the patronage of young artists' shaped your art collection?

Pushpakanthan introduced me to the exciting work of other young artists, including Fathima Rukshana, Vinoja Tharmalingam, and U. Arulraj, which really helped our collection/exhibitions address additional struggles for justice and equality: Muslim women, war-wounded, and Malaiyaha Tamils. I also bought several works at his student’s impressive degree show that tackled topics ranging from the burning of Jaffna Library to Sri Lanka’s oil dependency.

 

 

What are some of the most sentimental or meaningful pieces in your collection?

Pushpakanthan’s  Burning Memory II. I remember Saskia showing me this work when I first visited SFG expressly to see this series. I found it too disturbing at the time but we purchased it some years later when Nila told me she had considered using it for the cover of her book on theatre and peacebuilding. It’s too fragile to transport so we only get to see it when we’re back in Sri Lanka. 

 

 

Pakkiyarajah Pushpakanthan, 2015, Burning memory II, Mixed Media on Glass, 98cm x 66cm
 
 

Who is an artist you look to collecting and why?

My favorite of the 43 Group Ivan Pieris – but I’m content to visit his works at the atmospheric, if alarmingly dilapidated, Sapumal Foundation. I’d also love to own one of Saskia Pintelon’s crows but they all seem to be roosting at Tintagel Colombo!

 

 

What is the most recent piece of art you added to your collection and why?

Dominic Sansoni kindly let me root around the Barefoot Gallery storeroom last year and I came across TPG Amarajeewa’s Man & Crows (2013). It’s now helping me write about crow art before, during and after the Aragalaya/Porattam and will hang alongside other crow art by T. Shanathanan, Jagath Weerasinghe, and Eshadi Yaddehiarachchi in our Artful Struggles 2024  exhibition.

 

 

How do you go about finding new pieces to expand your personal art collection?

Visiting galleries, exhibitions, student degree shows – and storerooms! I also do a lot of pleading and wheedling with individual artists – sometimes successfully (Sujith Rathnayake’s iconic Ka-Ga-Ja V (2001) ) and sometimes not (you know who you are!)

 

(Top) Hema Shironi, 2020, Hidden Blur Families , Thread on Canvas, 15 x 15 cm

 

 

 

How do you hope to work with your art collection in the future?

Our dream is to create a mobile art exhibition that would tour villages and towns across the island as we believe art can help open spaces for difficult conversations about Sri Lanka’s   past, present, and future. Following the example set by my friend Scott Straus, we want to donate most of our art to a public university or museum (preferably in Sri Lanka) where it can also serve an educational purpose.

 

 

What is your advice to aspiring collectors? 

No advice but we do hope we might inspire other collectors to make Sri Lankan contemporary art more publicly accessible through loans, donations, and exhibition.

 

[Left to Right] Works by Muvindu Binoy, 2022, Hansika Herath,  Gayan Prageeth, Pushpakanthan Pakkiyarajah, Pala Pothupitiya