Momentum of the River's Flow

Until now my plans to visit the Bui Gallery had been foiled by its daytime opening hours (yes, i do go to work every day). But luckily Thursday night presented me with the opportunity to attend the exhibition opening of the Australian artist, Les Horvat. Tucked away down a little side street and housed in an amazingly restored traditional Vietnamese house the Bui Gallery is the brainchild of Betty Bui. Bui, of Vietnamese origin, was raised in France where she learnt the gallery trade at the Galerie Enrico Navarra in Paris. Bui wanted to set up a space in Ha Noi for artists to showcase their work in a worthy and just environment.

"A gallery is a proposition. It's simply our vision of things that people can react to as they want"

The problem with the existing art market in Viet Nam is that there is a lack of galleries that support and promote the work of specific individuals. This results in art pieces being sold from different retailers with no consistency in price. Through her international connections Bui seeks to change this so that artists in Viet Nam are more fairly represented. She is also keen to bring the work of international artists to Ha Noi and the exhibition I attended, Momentum of the River's Flow, is an example of this.

Horvat has been working in Australia as a commercial advertising photographer since 1984 and has won numerous prizes and awards over the years. Working from Melbourne earlier in his career he also founded his own studio complex, Twilight Zone, as a creative centre for commercial photographic illustration. In this exhibition he presents thirty-four photographs portraying Viet Nam's landscape in the context of culture, history and geography. The combination of subtle composition, sharp definition and the raw unaltered expressions of the subjects makes for a collection of very authentic local shots. It also gave me great inspiration for some of the regions in Viet Nam i hope to visit next month.

To quote Horvat on his series: “Referencing the position of an outsider, my gaze is ultimately defined by my own history and the cultural baggage I bring to the project.....Momentum of the River's Flow is a reference to the inevitable and unstoppable power of Vietnamese society. A society that seeks to move forward, no matter what the obstacles, no matter what the risks and no matter what the challenges, as in the inexorable flow of the metaphoric waterways that lie at its heart.”

You can have a look at some of the pictures here.