Vanguard Prize winner has debut exhibition
Helena Samarasinghe’s exhibition explores sport, power, integrity, identity and belonging through a series of vibrant new works including drawings and sculptural cut-out installations developed during the artist’s studio residency at Vanguard Court Studios in London.
Throughout her work, Samarasinghe seeks to challenge ideas around racialised docility, highlighting the resilience and strength of brown women.
Visitors are invited to immerse themselves in the world of sport, experiencing large and small-scale works depicting football, badminton, wrestling, running and hockey created with oil, soft pastels and charcoal – all embodying connection, movement and resilience. Wall-based works and free-standing drawings are arranged throughout the gallery, creating a field in which bodies – both depicted and present – meet, collide and negotiate as viewers move around the space.
For the artist, drawing and sport have more in common than one might think. Samarasinghe argues both involve physical acts of touch, speed and exertion – pastel to paper, feet running on the ground; and both show the body in motion, moving in unscored choreography.
Stylistically, the works draw on the bold, gestural contours of Kalighat painting – a 19th century Bengali folk art. Traditionally, these paintings foregrounded everyday subjects and disrupted colonial hierarchies. Samarasinghe extends this lineage through an amplified scale, positioning sport as a subject through which resilience, visibility and agency are negotiated. Through the lens of sport, the artist challenges ideas of brown female submission, instead spotlighting active, persistent and combative personas, driven by strength and movement.
A former competitive 800m runner and amateur football player, Samarasinghe credits sport as an important tool for building community and belonging, while also reckoning with one’s own limits, building resilience and quiet confidence. For the artist, this is more important than pursuing spectacle, personal bests, or the commodified culture that often surrounds professional sport.
Helena Samarasinghe, Artist and BA (Hons) Fine Art: Drawing Graduate,
Camberwell College of Arts, said:
“My work is informed by British and South Asian contemporary and historical cultural references such as Kalighat painting, the goddess Kali and poses from the Lionesses’ 2025 UEFA Women’s EURO win last summer. I work to create a mythology that feels empowering, expansive and interconnected. I have such a deep connection with sport, particularly with athletics and more recently football. There is no better feeling than the communal joy of winning as a team; it’s something very spiritually fulfilling, embodying and uniting. That is the true power of sport. It’s also important that I’m depicting brown women in sport, something we still don’t see enough of.”
Camberwell Space, Camberwell College of Arts, 45-65 Peckham Road, London, SE5 8UF until 17th July.
More information: https://www.arts.ac.uk/whats-on/reaching,-touching,-shedding-helena-samarasinghe
