Title

The Game of Places

Venues

UTS Gallery (9 September 2008 – 10 October 2008)

Date

(2008)

Summary

Multi-artist exhibition. Located: Australia (NSW). Photographs

Curator

Eunjong Lee

Countries of context

Australia | South Korea

Abstract

Kinam Kim 
Soonkwan  Kwon
Eunjong  Lee
Hosang Park
Eunkyung Shin

Roland Barthes commented that the true understanding of a city is achieved not by scrutinizing maps, but by experiencing and feeling the place. A city is not merely an architectural space. Rather, it exists as a text to be read. 
The Game of Places presents the work of five Korean photographers each investigating their relationship with their urban surrounds.

Several of the works in the exhibition portray Seoul, a densely populated metropolis of over 10 million residents, as almost devoid of people. These sparsely populated cityscapes act to highlight the almost universal urban spaces we inhabit and what they reveal about ourselves.

Through the magnificent, still, crystalline vistas in Isolated from the Territory, Soonkwan Kwon evokes a sense of wonder at the capabilities of human enterprise and, at the same time,  a critique of urban utopia.

Hosang Park in A square - the scenery of a small park, presents tender, disquieting bird's-eye views of empty local parks which recall childhood board-games, exploring the "local" as a means to unpack the so-called "global".

Eunjong Lee's studio images, Kinam Kim's documentation of  (the almost universal) Ikea store in The affordable solution for better living and Eunkyung Shin's A photo studio share the tracing of human aspiration. The depiction of real and simulated interiors in The Game of Places - be it in artist studios, photographer's backdrops or retail stores - reveals the underlying internal landscape of our hopes and paradoxically our fears. [gallery media]