‘Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless...’ Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky, 1949)
Paul Hallahan’s ‘Hopefully’ is an exhibition of all new works shown for the first time at The Dock. A series of paintings and a video that looks to the end of light in the day, the transition between one light and darkness, and the recording of time. Taking the sunset as a focus of attention Hallahan has made a new inquiry into how we record time in our mind's eye, and how the transition between light and dark leads us forward in a linear idea of time. The term sunset directs us to think of the sun moving in our skyline, yet the spinning of our planet is the true movement. With these small linguistic misinterpretations in the English language it changes our connection to the real action in play, a moving version of time and vastly different reality to our everyday.
Having lived for the past number of years on the west coast of Ireland, Hallahan has regularly gazed at the sun setting on the uninterrupted horizon line of the north Atlantic. This final view of a day is a view connecting to all of history, all of the humans on our island, and also to all humans into our future. This near cliché view we take for granted is something more than a view, it is a real-time witness to the movement of the earth as it spins at 1700km an hour and the works in the exhibition are an attempt to record this movement and light. He is drawn to the importance of light and colour in relation to time, energy, growth, and to the very essence of visual art, which is to allow something be seen.
Accompanying the paintings will be a new video work, that Paul made in collaboration with a close friend, Edinburgh-based musician and composer Joe Harney, which will be shown in the smaller gallery that looks east.
Eimear Reidy will be performing a musical response to this exhibition live on November 26th, 2022.