KALEIDOSCOPE OF PERCEPTIONS: ARJUNA GUNARATHNE

Breaking through the harsh reality of alienation, Arjuna Gunarathne’s Kaleidoscope of Perceptions offers manifold readings of immigrant experience. Coloured in dreams and anxieties, the geographical space of London becomes a psychological one. The landscape becomes a delightful sanctum, contrasting with the isolating experience of the city which exists removed from community, tropical warmth, and a milieu of colours. Gunarathne moves between emotional worlds and timelines, turning the canvas into a space where the lived, desired, and imagined simultaneously meld.

For many individuals arriving from developing countries to London, marked with its own fear of migrants, the city is never truly welcoming. Coupled with a continuous search for safety, stability, and security, it is far removed from the hopes with which newcomers have arrived, leaving behind the familiar comfort of their home countries. Yet, the city remains a receptacle of dreams.

Juxtaposing the past and present along with distinct visual cultures and emotions that feel contradictory in a singular space, forms the crux of Gunartahne’s visual curiosity. His exposure to Mughal miniature painting, Sri Lankan murals and Classical European paints find expression in his regular experiments. The flowing vine patterns of the traditional Liyawel found in Sri Lankan murals becomes the backdrop of Family I. Conceived in neon greens and yellows, with inspiration from African visual culture, the artist’s reconfiguration of the visual form yields a style that is both familiar and unfamiliar; located neither here nor there.

The artist’s uninhibited, spontaneous imagination captures the dream-like quality of a newcomer’s aspirations, along with their uncertainties. Bright and pastel hues override the apprehension recorded through graze marks. Opening itself up like a panorama, Existence records the artist’s early struggles. Built from the colours of bright promotional posters, the artist distorts the topography of a road he walked everyday for six years, mapping out a desire to drift away from uncomfortable memories.

Like the city which becomes a melting pot for diverse cultures, Arjuna’s practice results from a synthesis of multiple perspectives. His canvas is a cosmos within which histories exist, of art,of people, and of emotional journeys - each seamlessly blending into the other in a parable not necessarily of coexistence, but of shared illusions.