Dawn Ng: London Bound

Into Air, begun in 2018, is a growing body of work rooted in developing an alternate understanding and expression of time. What started out as a benign curiosity about holding time in an ephemeral object like ice, grew into a full-blown obsession with creating and documenting the disintegration of large sculptural blocks of frozen pigment. Ice is a perfect material because it cannot last. Its metamorphoses from solid, liquid to air, reflect both the arresting presence and passage of cyclical time. This journey of chasing time from one state to the next, crystallises in a large body of work that can be broken down into 3 parts: a series of photographs, Clocks; a series of films, Time Lost Falling in Love; and a series of residue paintings, Ash. The works are all traces and residues of each block’s existence as it memorialises its states from solid to liquid, and eventually to air. This passage from monumentality to nothingness is a work of remembrance and an ode to the truth that the most beautiful things in this world are the ones we cannot hold on to no matter how we try.

Clocks are monumental photo portraits of frozen pigment blocks in disintegration. Consisting of a melange of acrylics, inks, watercolours and dyes, each block is built in layers at sub-zero temperatures over a month. Once hauled from the freezer, these meteorites of melting colour are captured at regular intervals until they erode completely. Ice is the perfect material in Singapore because it cannot last. Each photo portrait stands as an arresting solidification of time in a colour, shape and form for the viewer.

While Clocks is a process of stopping time, Time Lost Falling in Love grew as an endeavour to bend time through the use of time-lapse videography. Each moving image traces the hypnotic collapse of a 60kg block of frozen pigments. Filmed in a custom-built pool set, the luscious disintegration of each vivid block is recorded in full detail over the course of 15-20 hours in the studio. With the goal of suspending time between one’s self and a moving image, each second is sped up through a meticulous editing process to create a meditative rhythm of falling colour, mirroring the majestic collapse of a waterfall or avalanche in slow motion.

Ash are residue paintings created by the manoeuvred staining, dredging and evaporation of melted pigment through large sheets of watercolour paper. In the final stage of each frozen block’s ‘return to air’, all residue is collected in a custom vat, which is lined with a twisted and compressed acrylic film. The paper, which acts as a sieve filtering time between two states from liquid to air, is lowered to blanket the melting pool of colour. Over time, the vat is manipulated to allow pigment to wash over certain areas, forming residual tributaries; while coagulating in others, to encourage the chemical breakdown and resurrection of paint. The long period of steeping results in a topography of blooming shades and allows paper fibres to fray, so parts of its surface can be peeled back by hand to reveal a lighter, distressed finish, echoing the patina of time.

Sullivan+Strumpf will be presenting new works by Dawn Ng from the Into Air series in London and Sydney in 2022.

Dawn Ng INTO AIR London Curated by Jenn Ellis 7 – 23 July 2022 St. Cyprian’s Church, Marylebone, London

Sydney 18 August – 10 September 2022 Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney

+ TO SEE AVAILABLE WORKS BY DAWN NG ACCESS THE VIEWING ROOM BY ENTERING YOUR EMAIL ADDRESSbit.ly/dawnng2