Dawn Ng’s work across a wide range of contemporary media is unified by subtle gradations of colour, which function as a way of exploring the passage and experience of time.

Since 2018, the artist has documented in the disintegration of frozen blocks of coloured pigment. Each weighing around 60 kilograms, the blocks undergo a three-week freezing process as Ng builds layers of strikingly coloured dyes and watercolour pigment within them. The finished blocks are photographed from multiple angles, and allowed to melt, with the pigment captured on paper to produce paintings. Timelapse videos compress the entire 20-hour process of decomposition into a mesmerising 40 minutes.

Five videos play simultaneously, one taking in the whole, the others focusing on specific details. The work’s black ground and palette of oceanic azure and telluric rust are inspired by photographs of our planet taken from space, introducing cosmic and metaphorical associations of a shared place, and of time running out.

– REUBEN KEEHAN | Curator, Contemporary Asian Art