Dawn Ng’s Melbourne Art Fair Commission Launched at The Ritz-Carlton, Melbourne

Multi-hyphenate visual artist Dawn Ng’s 2025 Melbourne Art Fair commission, The Earth is an Hourglass, 2024, was launched at The Ritz-Carlton, Melbourne on February 21, 2025.

The moving image artwork took centrestage during Melbourne Art Fair, held from February 20–23, while another work, Waterfall IX, 2025, was displayed digitally on Level 80 of The Ritz-Carlton, Melbourne for the duration of the fair. Commissioned by the Melbourne Art Foundation in partnership with Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) and supported by The Ritz-Carlton, Melbourne, The Earth is an Hourglass depicts 20 hours of footage compressed into just 20 minutes. Beginning in 2018, Ng filmed and photographed the work in stages, capturing a frozen block of layered coloured pigments as they slowly melt and disintegrate. The final time-adjusted film explored the experience and passage of time, reflecting Ng’s interest in the temporal, the ephemeral and the nuances of memory.

The final time-adjusted film explored the experience and passage of time, reflecting Ng’s interest in the temporal, the ephemeral and the nuances of memory.

The Singaporean artist, represented by Sullivan+Strumpf, works across a variety of mediums and scales, including painting, film, light, collage, sculpture, photography and large-scale installations. She described the commission as “an incredible opportunity to push the boundaries of my practice and bring this ephemeral meditation on time to life on a grand scale. I am deeply grateful for the support of [Melbourne Art Foundation, QAGOMA and The Ritz-Carlton, Melbourne] in realising this work, and for their commitment to championing contemporary art.”

Speaking at the launch event, Ng explained how her decision to use ice was informed by Singapore’s climate, which remains tropical and humid all year round. Ice is “the most ephemeral material of all in a hot city like Singapore,” and by combining coloured pigments, including acrylics and watercolours, in multiple layers, Ng explores the question, ‘what is time without numbers?’ Through the medium of video, the elastic and experiential nature of time is captured. “With video, you can go backwards [in time], forwards, hyper-compress it.” By reducing almost a day’s worth of footage, captured over several years, into 20 minutes and editing the melting of 300 blocks into a single depiction of one block, Ng offers a portrayal of time that was both visual and emotive yet deliberately non-numeric.

“We envisaged the hotel spaces as a platform for guest experiences enriched by art.”

The commission marked the second year that The Ritz-Carlton, Melbourne has partnered with Melbourne Art Fair. General manager Rachael Harman explained how the partnership reflected the hotel’s commitment to engaging with the local creative community. “We are excited to once again partner with Melbourne Art Fair to foster meaningful conversations about contemporary art,” she says. “As a property that is deeply connected to our city’s creative culture, The Ritz-Carlton, Melbourne is proud to support the special commission of Dawn Ng, The Earth is an Hourglass, and showcase an exclusive preview of Waterfall IX, 2025, in our sky-lobby on level 80.”

Taking pride of place among more than 1,000 original artworks displayed throughout the hotel, Waterfall IX offered “a moment of quiet reverence, where viewers [could] witness time’s gentle erosion in motion,” said Ng. Such immersive interactions with art were key to the curation of the art collection, explained Rowena Hockin of BAR Studio, which was responsible for the interior design. “In designing The Ritz-Carlton, we drew on Melbourne’s reputation as an art city. We envisaged the hotel spaces as a platform for guest experiences enriched by art and were fortunate to have an opportunity to bring together a collection of works from some of the significant local contemporary artists to tell the story of the city’s past, present and future.”