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Sri Lanka has developed a thriving, vital contemporary art scene over the past twenty years New artists are emerging to complement the work of their predecessors, who blazed trails in their employment of novel, often controversial, modes of practice Yet contemporary art remains firmly outside the mainstream in Sri Lanka, supported by a small percentage of the general public and the efforts of a handful of individuals, universities and galleries   While the art scenes in Pakistan and Bangladesh are beginning to gain recognition, and Indian contemporary art continues to boom, Sri Lankan art is virtually unknown internationally The handful of institutions in this country that do promote Sri Lankan work tend to do so in the context of South Asian art, with little focus on the country itself  Not a single Sri Lankan contemporary artwork has ever sold at auction in Great Britain   With so little attention paid to the scene, the popular impression of Sri Lankan art continues to be defined by the country’s most famous movement, the 43 Group The collective was founded in Colombo in 1943, and sought to pioneer a consciously Sri Lankan interpretation of European modernism The 43 Group artists, among them painter Harry Pieris and photographer Lionel Wendt, became renowned for their competitive strain of modernism  They remain the country’s most acclaimed artists, despite the group’s last formal exhibition being held in 1967   There followed a period in which Sri Lankan artists began to break with a perceived over-reliance on European modernism Prompted by the developments of Abstract Expressionism and the New York School, a seam of abstraction developed The time was a crucial one in the development of Sri Lankan art, with practitioners moving towards a sustained engagement with their chosen medium   Sri Lankan art is said to have become ‘contemporary’ in the early 1990s  The ‘90s Trend’ ushered in a revitalisation of art, characterised by a heightened awareness of the theoretical and conceptual  Sculpture and painting (which continues to be the most popular medium) were now complemented by digital, installation and performance art  There emerged a concerted effort to employ art as a social and