Artist: Ngaio Fitzpatrick
''Dissonance is a collaboration between artist Ngaio Fitzpatrick and composer Alexander Hunter.The work is an installation of moving images projected onto glass creating shifting imagery, reflections and transitions. It is about the cognitive dissonance or conflicts of interest we share as a species when faced with threats of dangerous climate change, the gap between words and action. It makes a visual statement without losing the work to politics and draws attention to those making a difference. It calls out our current leadership and is a call to action.''
Composer: Alexander Hunter
'The music for the video is an exploration of moving air featuring field recordings of wind turbines and recordings of a ‘fideag iseal’ or Scottish low whistle. The low whistle was used to bring out the melodies the turbines are already producing in reacting to fluctuations in pressure.'
Arts Curator: Virginia Rigney, Canberra Museum and Gallery
'An excavator methodically dismantles a suburban house. Its deliberate movements precisely smashing through windows, pushing over brick walls and crushing once sturdy foundations. A tall eucalypt is silhouetted against a flaming sky and a hulking old power station appears to stand as a lingering relic from another age. Looming above, the giant silver moon, our nearest neighbour in the universe, is imaged in exquisite detail.
These are the elements of an interconnected un-natural ecology of things that artist Ngaio Fitzpatrick draws together in her installation Dissonance. Their images are layered together over broken glass, both in the video and within the space itself; fractured lines reaching out into the public square like a web.
Broken glass has been a material of potent metaphor within the artists’ practice in recent years. The development of her works have been informed through her role as a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University’s Climate Change Institute and in collaboration with musicians, scientists and technical image makers she has created immersive installations of a savage beauty that invite quiet contemplation.
The project is Supported by Arts ACT and was shown at Canberra Museum and Gallery in 2020.