In Stick No Bills, Hashan Cooray’s latest body of work, he focuses on a selection of posters stripped from the public walls of Colombo. The sourced images, taken from their original posts, illustrate a critical mixture of politics, consumerism and social critique and eventually make their way to his digital and painted canvases. Here, they move from one type of public display to another, filtered through Hashan’s discerning gaze as they become interwoven with the pigments of his iconic portraiture work.   

Travelling during the night on resource-gathering skirmishes, Hashan tears off these posters from the walls that form the city. He takes images and text and adds them to his oeuvre of materials. Through a series of canvases and poster prints Stick No Bills presents the artist’s experience of navigating the worlds of commercial advertising, political propaganda and social critique by contrasting media headlines with a set of vibrant colour palettes that also reflect the traditional CMYK colour printing sequences of modern print media. Underlying these technical aspects lies the necessity of exploring the impact that excessive multimedia propaganda has on the psyche of an individual. Themes of deception, power and violence are investigated and repurposed as the artist replicates the printed forms in the context of his studio. These new samples aim to give the taste of power back to the viewer, who all too often has no choice but to absorb ideas about identity, community and society, their tones ranging from corrupt manipulation to the bitter truth.  

Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1987. Hashan Cooray pursued a career as a visual artist via unconventional means of both self-learning, courses in fine art and his experience as an Art Director in the advertising industry. Hashan Cooray has presented his work in group and solo exhibitions George Keyt Foundation (2010, 2017), Imago Mundi Publication (2016), Lab Rats, Art Space Sri Lanka (2017), Parahumans, SGG (2019), Nawakalakaruwo, JDA Perera Gallery (2019) and Desire, SFG (2020). He is currently Art Director of  Phoenix Ogilvy Sri Lanka. His works belong to private collections in Sri Lanka, Spain, USA, New Zealand and India.   
Hashan Cooray’s exhibition will be on display to the public at Saskia Fernando Gallery.