Gallery FourLife , The Modest Art Gallery space recently opened in Colombo, to give the trendiest fine art experience to art lovers, collectors, Scholars and to the public. Gallery FourLife consisted of four compartments as Public Gallery, Sri Lankan Art Pavilion, International Art Pavilion and Artists’ Live Studio and is solely dedicated to local and international artists to experiment and play with their imagination.
Chathuranga Biyagama and Janaka Perera are the founding duo of Gallery FourLife initiative who share equal love and interest for art. Speaking to Montage Chathuranga Biyagama, an artist by profession explains his passion towards art and the interesting story behind Gallery FourLife.
“The story of my art begins with the story of my life. From my childhood without a teacher I’ve tried to learn and explore the world of painting through many efforts. Studied different fields, Business Management, Law etc but finally ended-up with the colours.
Started from South Asia’s Sri Lanka and reached the most exclusive destinations of the world with my creations. Thailand, Taipei, Japan, Dhaka, London are some of the remarkable destinations where my creations still live on. Working on - without a master - in my own way - without discipline and with radical experiments with the vision of colouring the whole world through my creations,” Chathuranga said. Contrary to Chathuranga although Janaka is a full-time businessman his passion for art drove him to tie-up with Chathuranga to bring Gallery FourLife alive.
As Janaka explains, the main functions of the gallery are, hosting Art exhibitions for public preview, promoting paintings for sale through the International Art pavilion and Local Art pavilions (Showroom galleries). The Live art studio is for Artists to practise, create and utilise the working space and conduct Art residency programs. “We are developing an Artists reference library so that artists will have an opportunity to expose and develop themselves and share their knowledge among other artists around the world,” Janaka added.
In any country Art galleries are the places that showcase the history of a particular culture in a visual manner. As such, this visual history provides a snapshot of what life was like during a particular period of time through the artwork. For instance, the art may provide information about the people living in a particular time period.
Elaborating the importance of such Art Gallery space in Sri Lanka Janaka said “This Gallery space is different from other local galleries in many ways. Apart from conducting art exhibitions we promote artists, both locally and internationally. Our Art pavilion concept is mainly for artists to promote their work to potential buyers and art collectors.
While supporting artists to showcase their work and sell, our artists’ working studio is considerably spacious and can accommodate four to five artists simultaneously. We invite university students, those who don’t have enough working space at their boarding houses or in hostels to utilise this space to practise their skills and to develop their talents.
Also we have a reference library for artists to upgrade their knowledge and to create a community platform of artists both senior and junior to develop discussions and critics. Our E commerce platform is with modest technical facility where we promote Sri Lankan Art in the international platform. Through this initiative we have extended the facility for foreign buyers to purchase Sri Lankan Art works via credit cards and Paypal.”