The artwork is a part of a fit-out project by DJAS, working closely alongside the Canberra Glassworks, glass artist Harriet Schwarzrock and a team of specialist consultants to deliver the final piece. The conceptual framework is based on an exploration of opportunity to display and foster culture, values, influences & a sense of belonging.

Narrative: The title of this work, Murmuration, references the natural spectacle when up to tens of thousands of birds come together. Incredible shapes form in the sky through contracting and expanding as one flock merges into another; swirling in ever more complex and beautiful patterns. To artist and glass blower Harriet Schwarzrock, the experiences around her – the seemingly incidental, fragile things in the natural world are pause for reflection. Fascinated by the small and fleeting – the flight of dandelion seeds, the rippling of water, air currents – Schwarzrock often works with patterns derived from nature. The artist provides insight into the work through a short statement:

This work is a representation of a confluence, a coming together. The murmuration suspended in the foyer acts as a visual representation of migration, made from a collection of blown glass forms. In this sculpture more than 900 blown glass elements confluence to show that the sum of the parts can be more substantial than the whole. The work provides the viewer with a sense of gestural, flowing movement.

Art & Public Engagement: In the spatial context of the public foyer that it is placed in, the art piece interacts with the space around it through slight movements from air, changing transparency when viewed from multiple vantage points and levels, and reflecting & refracting ambient and directional light. The artwork has won accolade in form of The Pamille Berg Award for Art in Architecture.