'The Guardians' 

a solo exhibition by RAMESH MARIO NITHIYENDRAN

October 2021

Following major, recent sculptural commissions for The Art Gallery of New South Wales, HOTA and Dark MOFO, for this exhibition, the gallery will be flooded with an installation of cacophonous guardian and protector figures.
Produced in the artist’s signature neo-expressionist and polychromatic style, these figures extend the artist’s unconventional and irreverent approach to the medium. Ranging from larger-than-life sized to smaller scaled, they will embody elaborate building and glazing strategies the artist has experimented with over the past year.
The title of this exhibition gestures to broad histories related to sculptural and ritualistic icons designed to protect from evil. The artist is particularly interested in mythological narratives across the Asia Pacific. While he references imagery ofJapanese Nio guardians as well as Hindu Dvarapala door gate guardians, his influences are diverse. He reflects upon the guardian figure as a relevant archetype for our current times. He states “the [guardian] figures' allusions to ideas around regeneration, renewal and even collapse are particularly pertinent in our current global climate defined by social, environmental and public health shifts/upheaval”.
The works talk to a range of global sources that link to the artist’s cultural background, the language of religious iconography and contemporary culture at large. “I was born in Sri Lanka to a wider family that practised Hinduism and Catholicism to varying degrees and have grown up in Australia. Hindu, Christian and Buddhist cultures have coexisted and been intertwined in Sri Lanka since the introduction of Christianity in the 1st century and Buddhism in the 3rd century. The work will mine some of these reference points.”