Tucked inside a restored 1920s townhouse on Galle Road, Barefoot Gallery is one of Colombo's most enduring creative institutions. Part exhibition space, part cultural hub, and part design store, it has spent decades nurturing Sri Lankan artists, photographers, musicians, and filmmakers — while also introducing international audiences to homegrown talent. For visitors curious about the island's contemporary cultural scene, an afternoon here offers far more than a typical tourist stop.
What is the history of Barefoot Gallery?
The story begins in 1967, when Barbara Sansoni — a Kandy-born artist and textile designer educated in Sri Lanka and India — opened the Colombo Gallery on Anderson Road. The building itself was designed by Ulrik Plesner, a Danish architect whose modernist work left a quiet mark on mid-century Colombo. The gallery ran until 1971, when Barbara shifted her focus toward writing and toward building her handloom retail brand, Barefoot.
Two decades passed before the gallery reopened in 1991 under the name Gallery 706 Colombo, this time at its current Galle Road address. The venue found its footing quickly, and by 1999 it was renamed Barefoot Gallery to align it with the adjacent Barefoot store. That alignment proved inspired: the two spaces together became a singular destination for design-conscious locals and discerning visitors.
Who was Barbara Sansoni?
Barbara Sansoni was the creative force behind both the gallery and the Barefoot brand. Born in Kandy and educated across Sri Lanka and India, she developed an early and intense relationship with colour — one shaped, in large part, by the saturated palette of South Asian landscape and daily life. She began painting and drawing in childhood, though weaving came to her later, prompted in the early 1960s by a suggestion from Mother Good Counsel of the Sisters of the Order of the Good Shepherd.
Once she grasped the principles of the loom, Barbara approached it with the same eye she brought to painting: she drew from the colours of nature and surroundings, building abstract compositions rather than representative figures. To find new material, she travelled the island constantly — observing, sketching, taking notes. Her first handwoven cloth sold from her Colombo home. That modest beginning led to the opening of HOUSE, a retail store in the Fort district, and then to BAREFOOT at Galle Face Court, which sold her first collection of clothing.
Barbara's creative life ran on parallel tracks. She held her first solo exhibition in London in 1966, and continued to show work in Sri Lanka and internationally throughout her career. She also worked as a journalist and essayist for the Ceylon Daily Mirror and the Times of Ceylon in the early 1960s, and later published books including Vihares and Verandas. Few individuals have contributed so broadly — and so distinctively — to Sri Lankan visual and literary culture in a single lifetime.
What happens at Barefoot Gallery today?
The gallery programme is deliberately eclectic. At any given time, you might find a solo painting exhibition alongside a documentary photography show, a poetry reading in the courtyard, or a live acoustic set in the evening. Past events have included the World Press Photo Exhibition (2000–2003), which brought international photojournalism to a Colombo audience for the first time at this scale.
- Visual arts: Rotating exhibitions by Sri Lankan painters, sculptors, and printmakers, with occasional international shows.
- Photography: Documentary and fine-art photography exhibitions, including work by both established names and emerging local photographers.
- Performing arts: Concerts, poetry readings, theatrical performances, and film screenings in the open-air and indoor spaces.
- Private events: The premises can host private dinners and evening gatherings — the café space transitions well into an intimate event venue after hours.
The attached café serves food throughout the day and is a draw in its own right, popular with Colombo's creative community as well as visitors looking for a relaxed lunch away from the city's main commercial corridors.
Where is Barefoot Gallery and how do I get there?
Barefoot Gallery is located on Galle Road in the Colombo 3 (Kollupitiya) neighbourhood. It sits within the Barefoot store complex, so the two are easy to visit together. Galle Road is one of Colombo's main arteries and is well served by tuk-tuks, metered taxis, and app-based ride services. From the Fort area, the journey typically takes around 10–15 minutes depending on traffic.
If you are combining Barefoot Gallery with broader Colombo sightseeing, a Colombo city tour is a practical way to fit it into a half-day itinerary alongside other landmarks such as the Colombo Lotus Tower, the National Museum, and the Pettah market district.
What should I expect when visiting?
Dress is casual — the space is relaxed and unpretentious. The gallery itself is free or low-cost to enter for most exhibitions, though specific events such as concerts may carry a ticket price. The Barefoot store adjoining the gallery stocks handloom textiles, clothing, toys, books, and gifts, making it one of the better places in Colombo to find well-made souvenirs with genuine local provenance.
Visiting on a weekday morning tends to be quieter. Weekend evenings, when events are scheduled, draw a livelier crowd and offer a different — and equally worthwhile — experience of the space.
Why does Barefoot Gallery matter to Sri Lankan culture?
Sri Lanka's art infrastructure has historically been thin relative to the breadth of local talent, and Barefoot Gallery has spent more than three decades filling part of that gap. It is one of the few venues in the country with a consistent track record of giving serious exhibition space to living artists — particularly those working outside the mainstream — and of connecting them with an audience that includes both locals and the international visitors who pass through Colombo.
Barbara Sansoni's own legacy also resonates beyond the gallery walls. The handloom tradition she championed at Barefoot helped sustain craft skills that might otherwise have declined under pressure from industrially produced textiles. Her work sits at the intersection of commerce and culture in a way that is rare and, in retrospect, prescient.
For travellers whose interest in Sri Lanka extends beyond wildlife and ancient history, Barefoot Gallery offers a window into the island's living creative culture — modest in scale, distinctive in character, and entirely its own.
