MELBOURNE.- Sullivan+Strumpf is presenting a landmark exhibition by acclaimed contemporary artist Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, marking a decisive evolution in his practice: the vessel moves to the centre.

A decade on since Ramesh's first institutional solo exhibition in 2016, this new body of work ushers in a new chapter, driven by a renewed interest in materiality, process and transformation.

In Liquid Vessels, he returns to what he describes as the “first principles” of ceramics - extending his interest in figuration by embracing the archetypical pot form as a locus for creative, personal and philosophical exploration; treating it not as backdrop, but as protagonist. Figures and vessels fuse. The container becomes animate.

This shift is both formal and conceptual. The vessel operates simultaneously as sacred technology, ecological metaphor and diasporic archive. Referencing long histories of ceramic exchange across Sri Lanka and South India, the works draw on maritime trade routes, inscribed potsherds and hydraulic infrastructures that once structured collective life across the region.

Ramesh’s body of work for Liquid Vessels comprises a stunning series of brightly coloured hand-painted earthenware and glaze vessels, alongside bronze sculptures in which the vessel features, and two unique self-portraits.

At the centre of the exhibition sits his major work - a bronze and patina sculpture titled, Seated Figure with Vessels, about which he says: "This seated, hybrid figure is part vessel, part idol. I wanted this speculative figure to feel at once intact and fractured, devotional and theatrical, ancient and synthetic".

“Nithiyendran proposes a fluid imaginary that seeps beyond the geopolitical boundaries or bordered identities that violently structure our current world. The various vessels that recur throughout Liquid Vessels act as containers of South Asian hydraulic knowledge, which circulated across a shared sea over thousands of years: a cultural link that has left traces in ancient ceramic potsherds, despite British colonial attempts to partition the two regions. Testifying to enduring points of contact, Nithiyendran’s sculptures appear as strange artefacts: performing their materials with a surrealist humour, dreaming a generous and expansive aesthetics of liquid world-building.” – Dr Edwin Coomasaru, 2025, University College London / University of Bristol