It is often said that those living in exile inhabit two places at once. For Jagath, Australia is now home, yet the memory of Sri Lanka persists, an internal landscape shaped by a continual reckoning with the past. Through the printing of his poetry, which recalls his experiences as a survivor of torture and as a political and human rights activist during Sri Lanka’s 1987-1990 Southern Uprising, Jagath brings to light narratives long obscured by state-sanctioned histories. By situating these poems within the context of print, a medium once used to disseminate official news, he reclaims the process as a space for testimony and truth-telling. And in doing so, extends witnesses from the individual to the collective, opening a dialogue that connects his personal memory to broader experiences of hidden histories.

The collaborative process with the traditional printmakers – John Berry, Steve Boyd, Graham Elphick, Dennis Cox, Matt Tilbury and Robert Lockley – further subverts the historical function of the printing press as an instrument of authority. Here, Jagath reimagines it as a tool for recovery and circulation of suppressed truths.

Re-staged in Breath, the concertina book unfolds Jagath’s fragmentary poems and handcoloured prints in a continuous form, one with no beginning or end, evoking a history that – much like a river – reveals, unravels, and renews itself over time, its folding structure embodying a tension between revelation and concealment, between the seen and unseen, between the known and forgotten. (Text: Tia Madden)

Made in collaboration with Penrith Museum of Printing (John Berry, Steve Boyd, Graham Elphick, Dennis Cox, Matt Tilbury and Robert Lockley).