Night Horse examines the powerful currents between horses as they negotiate consent and desire during mating season. The viewer is drawn inside the kinetic swirl of the herd where hooves, flicking tails, and outstretched limbs offer an intimate encounter across the species divide. Shot in the heat of a February summer's night, on the artist's birthday, the charged atmosphere is palpable.

Amos Gebhardt says, "The images are raw, showing the mess of body fluids and muscle, giving vivid dimensions to the physical language of the body as an archive of story, to suggest a dramatic arc in horse terms."

Modern equine reproduction is now often a supervised insemination process, or between a mare and stallion who are performing on cue. Night Horse captures a rarely seen ritualised courtship, where the protagonists experience heightened states of being 'for themselves'.

The image titles – Midnight, Fetlock, Halo, Parallax, Zenith, Umbra – evoke the night, the horse, or the universe, interweaving the anatomical with the universal, the body with the stars. In observing these complex dynamics, Night Horse challenges the dominant anthropocentric view, capturing the undeniable force of non-human narratives.

Amos Gebhardt is the recipient of the inaugural Adelaide Studios Artist Residency (2019), presented by the South Australian Film Corporation in partnership with SALA (South Australian Living Artists) Festival.

The resulting moving image work Small acts of resistance premieres at Samstag Museum of Art and the Adelaide Film Festival on Friday 16 October 2020.

Family portrait, from the related Small acts of resistance photography series, is a 2020 Bowness Photography Prize finalist, and is on view now at Sydney Contemporary presents 2020

Press release courtesy Tolarno Galleries.