trade bazaars | SPRMRKT

This is the 4^th installation of “Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one”. A space dedicated to anyone with an artistic sensibility and a creative instinct, this show features photographer Sue Anne Tay. Exhibiting for the first time in Singapore, Tay’s images are divided into two themes: landscape and documentary photography. The main thrust of this exhibition lies in her documentation of the trade bazaars and landscapes in Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia.

Tay’s landscape prints capture a secret sense of serenity and surrealism in a provincial but no less beautiful countryside. Taken with a DSLR, these were about as close as the images got to being “digitally manipulated”. Reprints are available for purchase at S$275 nett each. Please write to us at contactus@sprmrkt.com.sg for purchasing methods and delivery details.

A statue of a headless goat stands atop a boulder along the Southern Corridor highway that leads to the Irkeshtam Border Pass with China. The headless goat carcass is used in a game of polo in Central Asia, called buzkashi.

Cows graze in pastures near Toktogul, located along the Bishkek-Osh highway.

Moving on to a photographic spreadsheet of Tay’s encounters with everyday Kyrgyz life, this series details the country’s food types, economic activities and social behaviours, bringing us closer to authentic Kyrgyz culture and its inhabitants. This is just an extract of Tay’s work, where she is also contributing photographer for ChinainCentralAsia.com, an ongoing research project charting China’s growing influence in the Central Asia region.

: A tracksuit in national colors and emblem with “Kyrgyz Republic” emblazoned across.

: Female Kyrgyz traders chat at the Osh bazaar, located in the country’s capital Bishkek. Shipping containers commonly serve as storefronts where traders display their goods.

: A young Kyrgyz boy clutches his new toy gun. The bazaars have everything from sundries, clothes, toys and household appliances, and can be a treat for every young child.

: Two female traders in traditional scarves and cardigans pose in the Karasuu Bazaar in southern Kyrgyzstan’s Osh region.

On a different side of trade and industry, and as part of her commission exchange for SPRMRKT, Tay explored café culture in cosmopolitan Shanghai while we followed her through this process and featured a live feed on Instagram (#tayexhibits), over two weeks before the launch of this exhibition. Now at SPRMRKT, we’ve used our retail shelves to create an installation of these images, like window frames where we peer in to a different life of spaces in other places, or is it?