Graeme Patterson

Ghosts of a Gathering 2021
Multi-media installation / Installation multimédia
Site 9 – James Ryan Tenement, Bonavista

Projected scenes of a dazzling bacchanalian revelry, a seeming echo of a wild house party, propel the viewer through Graeme Patterson’s Ghosts of a Gathering. Interrelated projections on both floors and in multiple rooms of the James Ryan Tenement House respond to the artist’s hypnotic score, which saturates the entire building with reverberating sound. The costumed figures of The Space Disco Starling move with irrepressible flow in the space. Patterson’s life-size starling character is multiplied, enticing all to become part of its murmuration, issuing an irresistible invitation to wildness. 

Patterson developed the installation for the Biennale and this site, generously provided by local business Bonavista Living. Constructed in 1879 by Richard Ash, who based it on the design of James Ryan, this tenement house was built for Ryan Premises management and their families. The wildness and joy of uninhibited revelry in the context of the tenement homes hints at the radical potential of labour’s collective conscience and action. The European starling is an invasive colonizing species known for murmurations, a phenomenon that results when hundreds, sometimes thousands, of starlings fly in swooping, intricately coordinated patterns through the sky. It also serves as a sentinel species, commonly used to detect environmental risks to humans by providing advance warning of a danger. Designed for dancing and performance, The Space Disco Starling costume was inspired by the space disco/funk era of 1970s music, and handmade by the artist. In a variety of forms, the starling is a repeated figure and reference through Patterson’s distinguished career.

MH