2023-24
multi-media project consisting of sculpture, costumes, video, music, and virtual reality
Installations at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Dalhousie University Art Gallery, and Grenfell University Art GalleryStrange Birds is Sackville, New Brunswick artist Graeme Patterson’s third thematic exhibition. In Strange Birds, his sculptures are also the settings for both a projected animation and a virtual reality environment. The starlings in Strange Birds are an invasive species, propagating uncontrollably until they overwhelm the fragile eco-system of the marshland. Eventually the sea overwhelms the world constructed by these strange birds, erasing all evidence of their presence, leaving just the water and a great blue heron who has acted as a kind of observer of the antics of the birds who settled in its ecosystem. These avatars reflect two aspects of the artist, and through his vision, we viewers can slip into his world, one which eerily mirrors our own.
Curated by Ray Cronin
