Watching a sunset, 8.49 pm | Andy Parsons at Queens Street Studios

Event Details

Watching a sunset 8.49 pm explores how a moment in time can take years to describe. The work explores perception, memory and time. This is reflected in the different times attributed to each successive exhibition in a sequence of six that begins at QSS in Belfast. Each subsequent exhibition features works that are assigned a different moment in time, from 20.49pm through to 20.54pm

‘My current body of work is based on a scene I witnessed where a large group of people sat by a riverbank quietly watching a sunset. There was a huge crowd, as though a concert was about to begin, but it was just people coming together to enjoy the beauty of nature. 

I have spent the last two years making paintings, drawings and sculptures that try to evoke this brief moment. The fact that I saw the people sitting watching for just an instant means I have had to think really hard about what was there. And memory is inconsistent and unreliable; each image could be true, but there is nothing to prove or disprove their veracity.’

The history of art is full of instances where artists have addressed our human need for fellowship and beauty through interactions with the natural world. This work does so in a uniquely perilous time for the environment and in an era where the role of the spectator is uniquely problematic. 

In setting up a situation in the gallery, where the viewer’s gaze is returned by the people watching a sunset in the artworks raise questions are raised about neutrality and the role of the spectator.