Michella Perera is a Sri Lankan born, Irish artist recently based in Marseille, France (2022). She holds a Master of Fine Art degree (2017) from the Glasgow School of Art. She works primarily in sculpture and installation and the impetus for her work derives from personal subjective sensations, which cannot be resolved within oneself. Social paradoxes and contradictions, which perhaps have no resolution, are actualized in her work in order to delineate autobiographical issues in relation to wider social concerns. Perera’s practice centers on unpacking what these feelings might be for her and how they might impact the audience – exploring the potentials for collectivity and empathy between artist, work and viewer. As such the work relies on syntactic and semantic relationships between individual elements in the installation as well as a relationship to the space and the viewer.
Her recent projects have examined the intersection between placemaking, pattern-making and a fictionalisation of culture due to emigration, which results in the obfuscation of cultural artefacts and migrant bodies. She considers what cultural objects and patterns signify when their originating context is removed through migration. Perera has compressed her recent body of work onto a single plane - giving the impression that the spatial installation has drawn itself together. This new direction was triggered by the pandemic’s altered awareness of occupied space. Her new series of work is connected through the relationship between the opposing forces of carving and textile manipulation.Taking a traditionally masculine practice of placemaking though architecture, stone/wood carving - a materially reductive process - and reconfiguring it in the more feminine language of textile manipulation/dressmaking - a materially additive process - Perera foregrounds the cultural and relational specificity between place / pattern / bodies. Traditionally patterns were inspired by place - the surrounding landscape, the relationship between the quality of light and available dyes, and the architectural setting. Patterns are also identity markers, and within the Indian subcontinent, is also a characteristic that distinguishes different ethnicities.
The artist often engages in the reshaping/reconstruction of herself in an effort to consider the dissonance between Perera’s awareness of her selfhood and a wider understanding of self within a certain cultural and architectural space. Emigration rewrites body language. Observing, reshaping, destroying and restarting - Perera scrutinises herself often through the medium of clay (materially similar to Adam who was created from the dust of the ground), then reappearing as disjointed and incomplete in her installations. Through the engagement in various processes and the embodiment of certain patterns, she arrives at a self awareness that is non-linguistic, arational and similar to Bergsonian introspection - embodied.
Her practice is rooted in personal narratives and dissonances, which are the metaphors of larger social concerns. In exhibiting her work revealing / concealing certain personal information, Perera positions meaning structures as malleable. There is always the potential for missed connections: in being missed, these connections create different fictions, different narratives that come from the subsequent disconnected combination of intention, location, and translation.
Her recent projects have examined the intersection between placemaking, pattern-making and a fictionalisation of culture due to emigration, which results in the obfuscation of cultural artefacts and migrant bodies. She considers what cultural objects and patterns signify when their originating context is removed through migration. Perera has compressed her recent body of work onto a single plane - giving the impression that the spatial installation has drawn itself together. This new direction was triggered by the pandemic’s altered awareness of occupied space. Her new series of work is connected through the relationship between the opposing forces of carving and textile manipulation.Taking a traditionally masculine practice of placemaking though architecture, stone/wood carving - a materially reductive process - and reconfiguring it in the more feminine language of textile manipulation/dressmaking - a materially additive process - Perera foregrounds the cultural and relational specificity between place / pattern / bodies. Traditionally patterns were inspired by place - the surrounding landscape, the relationship between the quality of light and available dyes, and the architectural setting. Patterns are also identity markers, and within the Indian subcontinent, is also a characteristic that distinguishes different ethnicities.
The artist often engages in the reshaping/reconstruction of herself in an effort to consider the dissonance between Perera’s awareness of her selfhood and a wider understanding of self within a certain cultural and architectural space. Emigration rewrites body language. Observing, reshaping, destroying and restarting - Perera scrutinises herself often through the medium of clay (materially similar to Adam who was created from the dust of the ground), then reappearing as disjointed and incomplete in her installations. Through the engagement in various processes and the embodiment of certain patterns, she arrives at a self awareness that is non-linguistic, arational and similar to Bergsonian introspection - embodied.
Her practice is rooted in personal narratives and dissonances, which are the metaphors of larger social concerns. In exhibiting her work revealing / concealing certain personal information, Perera positions meaning structures as malleable. There is always the potential for missed connections: in being missed, these connections create different fictions, different narratives that come from the subsequent disconnected combination of intention, location, and translation.
CV
Education
2017
Master of Fine Art - Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, UK
2014
Bachelor of Fine Art in Sculpture and Combined Media Limerick School of Art and Design, Limerick, Ireland
Exhibitions/Residencies/Awards
2022
Sculpture Placement Programme - Stamps on Coarse Skin
Public Art - light-boxes - West Graham Street, Glasgow, UK
2021
Collaborative show, Point et Ligne Sur Jardin, Glasgow Open House Michella Perera & Marc Etienne, Glasgow UK
Glasgow International Satellite Show, Classic Example, Various Locations, Glasgow
Glasgow Community Architects, Tramway, Glasgow, UK
2020
Online Residency, Orbit Gallery, Liverpool, UK
Solo Show, Touring Permutations 16 Nicholson Street, Glasgow, UK
Collaborative show, Tailored Breath
Marc Etienne & Michella Perera, Glasgow Project Room, UK
2019
Group show, Pilotenkeuche Leipzig, Germany
Group Show, Trash Beach, Kuntskraftwerk, Leipzig, Germany Collaborative Show, Tender Beige
Michella Perera & Marc Etienne, Mazda 2.0 Leipzig, Germany Residency, Pilotenkeuche, Leipzig, Germany
2018
Residency, Mauser Foundation, Costa Rica
Collaborative Show, Imago Hortorum, Alys Owen & Michella Perera House For an Art Lover, Glasgow, UK
Residency, Shed Space Residency, House For An Art Lover, Glasgow Residency, PECAH, Manila, Himalayas, Uttarkhand, India
2017
Commission, Castle to Crane, Galgael Trust, Glasgow UK
Graduate award, Glasgow Sculpture Studios Honorary Membership, Glasgow, UK
Group show, MFA Degree Show The Glue Factory, Glasgow, UK
2016
Group show, MFA Interim Show, Reid Gallery, Glasgow, UK
2015
Group show, War, BaAD Studios, Glasgow, UK
2014
Solo show, Preludes, Tactic Studios, Cork City, Ireland
Residency, National Sculpture Factory, Cork, Ireland
Graduate Award, Limerick and Cork, Ireland
Group show, Conversation | Reconstructed, The Culture Box Temple Bar, Dublin, Ireland
Group show, First Light, Limerick School of Art and Design, Ireland
2013
Group show, Liminal, Boat House, Limerick, Ireland
Group show, Nineteen, Davis Street, Limerick, Ireland
Group show, The Gathering, Shannon Airport, Limerick, Ireland
2012
Public Sculpture, Memorial for the Emergency Services Clancy Strand, Limerick, Ireland