Northern Soul

Andy Parsons will give a guided tour of his exhibition at The Dock followed by a documentary screening on Northern Soul. This event is supported through the Night-Time Economy After Hours at the Museum scheme. Admission is free. Keep the faith!

Andy Parsons

I am interested in dance is an egalitarian space where people are free to express themselves. My current work, The Dancers, explores the universality of music and dance, and the idea of joy. The imagery is based on nightclubbing and the Northern Soul scene. Northern Soul is music from the 1960s that didn’t enjoy commercial success at the time, but became popular with DJs and dancers as part of an underground scene in the 1970s and 80s, and has subsequently become a worldwide phenomenon.

As an authentically working-class movement, it has much in common with the rave scene of the late 80s and early 90s. On the dancefloor at Northern Soul nights, it is common to see dancers in their 70s alongside teenagers. Music and dance are often central to the stories people tell about their lives and are recounted as moments of pure joy. The sense that music and dancing will change in their specifics but retain their universal importance as part of our emotional lives and identity is an area I am researching and exploring in my work.

Andy Parsons practice combines working in community contexts with making drawing, sculpture, and painting. Projects have focused on people and places, and on activities where people work together and help each other. Andy has worked in many different community settings, including youth projects, community care settings for older people, mental health settings, and a community boat-building project in the Sligo docks.

Recent projects include Conversations in Portrait, a virtual portrait project with older people across Ireland, and a two-year residency at Sligo University Hospital for The Model Home of The Niland Collection, which culminated in a major solo exhibition at The Model in Autumn 2021 titled Patience. Parsons has received several significant awards including the Pollock Krasner Foundation Award, and has exhibited internationally including solo exhibitions at the Standpoint Gallery, London; APT Gallery, London; and S.I.B. Gallery, Tokyo.