Barbie, Big Cats And Buddhas

Ramesh is wearing all black today – unexpected, for someone with such a colourful (in the literal sense) reputation. But somehow it feels the colour is still pouring out of him. He is fizzing with energy – like a shaken-up soda bottle bubbling out with ideas.

I’m very surprised to see you in black today. I saw so many pictures of you in the brightest colours.

[Laughs] Well! It’s a bit of texture, it shows you reality. Actually…

Ramesh jumps up to grab his laptop, flips it open and starts scrolling through images of a recent photoshoot. He flies past thumbnails of him in purple and yellow on fuchsia backgrounds, slowing down when he hits a run of ponytailed, monochromatic shots. 

It’s really funny, because there were so many images of me in colour so I wanted to get some photos that were a different edge. So we did a slicked back look, and white and black.

How funny that for you to get ‘an edge’, you wear black and white.

Yeah! Yeah. Well, it was an idea – if it worked, who knows? But that was kind of in contrast to the more chaotic energy of being in the studio.

That ‘chaotic energy’ is palpable – Ramesh’s studio is alive. He warns we’ll be ‘getting our steps in’ as we circle and dart around the place. There are finished works in one corner. Part-way done works in another. An enormous spiky blue-glazed figure sitting in the open door of the kiln. There are works just being started – Remy Faint (an emerging artist who assists in the studio a couple of days a week) stands at a bench hand-forming a large mass of clay destined to support a four-headed piece for Ramesh’s next solo exhibition. There are imagined works in drawings stuck to the walls (he sees these as ‘prompts’ rather than blueprints), and in thick diaries full of sketched ideas. A reference board is plastered with A4 printouts of Barbie and her modular wardrobes, photographs of big cats in the wild, and images of Gandhara Buddhas. This sculptural programme of Buddhist imagery dates back to as early as the third century – a time when Alexander the Great was moving through the region of northwest Pakistan – and forms ‘the key historical reference’ for Ramesh’s latest work.

On the face of it this is a disparate collection of references but somehow, it makes sense. RAMESH! sense, anyway. And it all points to a very deliberate process behind the spontaneous feeling of his finished work.

‍It’s kind of that push-and-pull between trying to make something look expressive and quick, when it’s actually not at all, you know. So it’s this highly constructed aesthetic. All of these, for example [he points to the snaking appendages on a row of drying busts], they were hollow forms that were attached, and there were all these props so that they wouldn’t fall while they dried. So to get this thing looking like it’s ‘RAH!’ [he mugs like a cartoon lion] is not very easy.

In only 10 years, Ramesh has become internationally renowned for that ‘rah!’ look. There’s just so much work, put out at such an epic scale. He was once called a ‘prolific maniac’ – how does he feel about that? He laughs – and readily agrees.

Yeah! Well, I just feel like I’ve got so many ideas all the time. You know what I mean? There are just so many things I want to make. And it’s almost like, I wish there was a time machine and I could speed things up – like those things have been sitting there drying for weeks, and I just want to get their heads on. And then once you make that thing, it’s like you want to make sixty other things. It’s this almost consuming ideation, that ends up with form.

An artist’s obsession, clearly – but there’s also a drive and discipline in the mix.

I think it also comes from having that migrant background – like, there was no such thing as a gap year for me. I went to a selective school. It was always about your value contributing to an economy, to society, to labour. And I think I was raised to think like that – so I’ve always liked working. It’s always been my default position.

I pause a fraction too long before asking my next question, and Ramesh is already back to work.

Can I just break for one second?

Absolutely

He bounds over to the bench to make some adjustments to the clay base Remy is working on.

I reckon this neck needs to be bigger. Cos the heads on it are going to be massive.

Remy suggests cutting out some of the clay pieces from the top and resetting them wider.

Yeah – and then I reckon we work on the base... I dunno, how big do you think it needs to be? 

He indicates the girth with his hands; Remy concurs. Ramesh bounds back to his green tea.

Sorry I just have this impatience with getting my thoughts out ... it’s just a physics thing. The heads on that one will be much more complicated so having a bigger neck will do it justice.

There is no need to apologise. The thought of one of Ramesh’s sculptures collapsing under its own weight feels sacrilegious. Has he ever had any such disasters? 

I mean there have been some real shockers of disasters that have happened. But surely with any line of work there’s disasters.

Yeah, yeah. I think they’re just not as ... tangible. What do you do?

Move on, cry. Well, I don’t cry but – I think it’s about this balance between controlling the variables, but still taking risks amongst the process. Even putting four heads on a chunky neck is going to be a risk, but you know, what’s the point of life otherwise? 

There are artistic risks beyond studio mishaps, of course. Especially in an unpredictable click-button era – the lingering threat of controversies and confected outrages over works, or the artist themselves.

Is there any sort of religious imagery that you wouldn’t touch?

I don’t touch anything that I’m not connected to, culturally, if that makes sense. Although very interestingly, what you find is, the more you research these religious iconographies, they’re all sites of multiple religions. I think this idea that imagery has this singular cultural narrative is not true, and that’s what fascinated me about the Gandhara Buddhist representations. So I think – this sounds a bit weird – but I try to build them a bit broken. Like, you can kind of see that there might be a limb missing, or a section might be pulled out, which is also a reference to how they’re preserved in museums over time. And that’s when the heads are on. They look like they’ve just been shoved on, so it’s not hiding, there’s nothing seamless. It’s very, very constructed.

Part of Ramesh’s appeal is his accessibility. He is deliberately open and generous, seeing it as a core part of the job. His Instagram account features regular videos showing him bringing his works to life, set to pop icon bangers – Britney Spears, Mandy Moore, Dua Lipa, Nicki Minaj – that reveal his sense of fun.

There are a lot of expectations on your person. I think to humanise artworks, and engage audiences, people want to see the person and have a sense of what they like or whatever. And I don’t think that’s wrong - I think that’s human nature, you know, and I’m quite happy to do that. But I think the majority of the studio is fairly solitary.

Do you get lonely?

Yes! Yeah. It’s not even lonely... It’s more just like, you feel like you only have one thing.

What about the neighbours? They’re friendly - Ramesh says there’s usually a lot more industrial noise, too. It’s unusually quiet today without the sounds of spraying and grinding at the stonemasonry business on the next lot.

There’s also a pole dancing studio next door. And their speaker is right in the corner, so when they’re doing routines, it’s playing in here – they’re currently doing a routine to Aladdin’s ‘Arabian Nights’.

As in the Disney movie?

Yes! [he roars with laughter] At about six, it starts on repeat. So the auditory quality of this area is very.... layered.

Noise, colour, movement – all the work, happening all the time. How is this guy not exhausted? When does he take a break?

I think the hard thing for artists, for me at least, is that when you're working and your artwork has an element of self-portraiture, it’s your interest, it’s also your business. There’s no separation between your identity and your work. Sometimes there’s this feeling that your sense of self is anchored on what you’re making. And I think that’s where that obsession, and maniac-ness comes into play. But I also  if I’m not making them, I’m thinking about them, and thinking about what I want them to be like. 

Home is where Ramesh finds some separation from the work. It’s a small converted warehouse apartment in the inner west. He’s been working with interior design studio YSG to decorate it, creating a very different but still highly personal aesthetic.

A lot of the time people will comment that I don’t have any of my artworks in my house, right? And I just say ‘I look at my artworks all day, I don’t want to go home and look at them’. I want to look at nothing, or someone else’s art.

He jumps back to the computer, this time to pull up the concept presentations and show how the same cultural and historical influences behind his off-the-hook gallery pieces are informing his creation of a haven, too.

I wanted it to look like Sri Lankan vernacular housing but updated. It’s very woody, it’s very earthy – we’re painting the floors this terracotta colour, we’re working on the light fittings. The rug [a chequerboard of clay browns] is a reference to terracotta tiling, with different shag piles and different heights. 

There must be something a little nuts in there, though?

One thing I am doing myself, the only thing that’s gonna exist, that’s mine - this is going to sound a bit ridiculous, but I think you’ll be here for it. I just said: I really wanna do an amazing selfie mirror. Because you know, I always take photos of my outfits, I need a good mirror. So what we’re doing – I love how we’re going from very high concept to this – but I’m making this massive selfie mirror. I’m making custom tiles – sculptural glazed tiles – that are gonna get embedded into the frame. 

The world is definitely here for a Ramesh-framed selfie mirror.  

Ramesh is represented by Sullivan+Strumpf. For his first Australian solo show since March 2023 he will take over both levels of their Zetland gallery in Sydney.

Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran

The Self Portrait and the Masks

Sullivan+Strumpf Sydney

12 September – 12 October 2024

sullivanstrumpf.com