Reaching, Touching, Shedding - Helena Samarasinghe

Camberwell Space is delighted to present Reaching, Touching, Shedding by Helena Samarasinghe, alumna of BA Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts (2024). The exhibition brings together drawings and cut-outs developed during the artist’s studio residency, exploring sport, power, integrity and belonging. Large - and small-scale works, created with oil, soft pastels and charcoal, are layered and mark-driven, tracing embodied 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 through the space.

For the artist, the immediacy of drawing parallels the act of playing sport: mark-making becomes a form of unscored choreography, where gesture and pressure register the body in motion. The physicality of the medium foregrounds touch, speed and exertion; dense colour and repeated contact with the paper surface render the image as an index of embodied experience.
Helena’s interest lies less in elite competition than in the grassroots experience of sport and the feeling of it. For the artist, playing becomes a way of reckoning with one’s own limits, building resilience and a quiet confidence through physical challenge alongside others, rather than pursuing spectacle, personal bests, or the commodified culture that often surrounds professional sport.

Stylistically, the work draws on the bold, gestural contours of Kalighat painting. Produced quickly and circulated widely, these paintings foregrounded everyday subjects and disrupted colonial hierarchies and elite courtly traditions such as Mughal miniature painting. Helena extends this lineage through an amplified scale, emphasising tensed musculature and psychological intensity. Sporting performance becomes a site through which resilience, visibility and agency are negotiated.

Coinciding with World Refugee Day, the exhibition includes a portrait of Dorsa Yavarivafa, member of the Refugee Olympic Team.

Exhibition runs: 15 May – 17 July 2026, Thursday - Saturday (11am - 4pm)

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Workshops and Events
A public programme of workshops and events will accompany the exhibition.

Thursday 14 May, 6 – 8.30pm: Opening Event
Thursday 28 May, 4 – 6pm: Workshop led by Helena Samarasinghe
Friday 19 June, 6 – 8.30pm: Exhibition Walkthrough & Roundtable

Exhibition, workshops and events are free to attend and open to all - booking is required for workshops and events only.

About Helena Samarasinghe
Helena Samarasinghe is a British–South Asian artist working primarily in drawing. A 2024 graduate of BA Drawing at Camberwell College of Arts, her practice uses sport as a personal and political framework to engage with postcolonial discourse, centralising brown female identity. Stylistically inspired by the bold, gestural lines of Kalighat painting, her work is situated within a lineage of feminist resistance. Her subjects, characterised by tensed muscles and discerning expressions, use sporting performance to convey embodied resilience.

About the Vanguard Prize
The Vanguard Prize supports emerging artists and strengthens Vanguard Court’s strong links with Camberwell College of Arts. Since 2010, it has supported recent graduates to develop their practice and careers through a year’s free studio residency and mentoring, culminating in an exhibition at the College.

The residency was previously awarded to Murray O’Grady (BA Fine Art: Sculpture 2010), Philip Li (BA Ceramics 2011), Phillip Booth (BA Fine Art: Painting 2012), Lauren Allen (BA Fine Art: Painting 2013), Alex Deveraux (BA Fine Art: Sculpture 2014), Queenie Clarke (BA Fine Art: Drawing 2015), Billy Crosby (BA Fine Art: Painting 2016), Rosie Ward (BA Fine Art: Sculpture 2017), Gwendolyn Spink (BA Fine Art: Drawing 2018), Isobel Finlay (BA Fine Art: Drawing 2019), Niccolo Binda (BA Fine Art: Drawing 2020), Amir Dehghan (BA Fine Art: Photography 2021), Robin Finch Pickering (BA Fine Art: Painting 2022), Stella Pearce (BA Fine Art: Painting 2021).

Image: Helena Samarasinghe, detail from a larger work, chalk pastel on paper, 2025. Image courtesy the artist.

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Host or Publisher Camberwell College of Arts, UAL