Caught frozen forever in time and concrete, the memory of this bird is what inspired LN Tallur’s new solo titled “UKAI (Cormorant Fish Hunting)” at Nature Morte. “I was in a small town near Shanghai in China about five years ago, when I first saw it. A fisherman had tied a snare around the base of a cormorant’s neck. He would tug at the snare every time the bird caught a fish, allowing the bird to take in fish that were smaller than a certain size. It couldn’t swallow large fish, which the man would then take away, before sending the bird back to fish again,” says Tallur.
Known in Japanese as Ukai, this technique of fish hunting was developed in medieval China and Japan in the 16th century; it travelled to Europe in the 17th century and still exists as a popular sport in Japan. “It struck me that a very similar thing happens in our IT industry — it is a process of outsourcing labour in digital communications to satiate manifestations of human greed. Ukai can be a brand name in itself,” he says. Skoda Prize Winner of the Skoda Prize in 2012, Karnataka-born Tallur divides his time between India and South Korea. In his new show, Tallur — known for kinetic sculptures which generally reflect society and politics — now experiments with several ideas at once. “If you have a lot of words in your vocabulary, you should make use of it. Visual art is my language, and the purpose is to add to my aesthetic dictionary,” he says.