My current body of work is about Watching a sunset. It is based on people coming together to experience things collectively. The work depicts a group that has convened for the purpose of joy.
The work is based on a scene I witnessed where a group of people sat by a riverbank quietly watching a sunset. There were a huge number of people, as though a concert was about to begin, but it was just people coming together to enjoy the beauty of nature.
My immediate response on seeing this scene was that I should take a photograph. Fortunately I didn’t. Because if I had, the photograph would have become the image.
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; things that I have seen before, read about, or heard about attach themselves to the initial image in my minds eye, creating endless new hybrid images. Each of these could be true – there is nothing to prove or disprove their veracity.
The work explores ideas around spectacle, leisure, community and pleasure. 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. My work does so in 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 setting where the viewer’s gaze is returned by the people in the artworks, questions are raised about neutrality and the role of the spectator.