A photo by Liam Morgan.
Kathmandu Photo Gallery presents “Game: Part I”, a photographic exhibition by Thailand-based Canadian artist Liam Morgan, who captures buffaloes through lens from different acts of shooting, from Sept 5-Oct 31.
Using a single piece of equipment — half hunting-rifle and half camera — Morgan rides open-air trains around rural Thailand shooting each buffalo he passes.
On display in this first instalment of “Game” will be a collection of hand-printed black-and-white photographs, which shows how the act of shooting becomes as important as the resulting imagery — each picture is informed by the system in which it was created. It can be taken as self-reflexive — allegorical of the medium, as well as dealing with temporal and compositional concerns in the still image.
But the specific symbolism points outwards, to collective human myths and the conflict inherent there. To the “us” and to the “them”.
The narrative builds on the given symbolic connotations of the buffalo and the shooting of that animal from trains.
Accordingly, the work deals with notions of power and violence in Morgan’s (semi-) constructed idyll.
- Kathmandu Photo Gallery is on Pan Road (near the Indian temple on Silom Road) and opens Tues to Sun from 11am-7pm.
- Call 02-234-6700.