IAN WIECZOREK - Visual Artist
One Day 40 Sunrises
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One Day : 40 Sunrises
A project comprising 40 paintings based on live-streamed
webcam imagery of sunrises around the world on 15 July 2020.
One Day : 40 Sunrises was funded by The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Online video presentation of One Day : 40 Sunrises
Sunrise is a phenomenon we are all familiar with, and regardless of geographic location or setting, it is an event that is infused with optimism and the possibility of new beginning. In the face of natural majesty (the Sublime), it can also serve as a reminder of our own fragility.
'Live' webcams linked directly to the internet have become increasingly available to access online, and it is now possible for the viewer to be remotely 'present' in many locations around the world. We can watch beaches at holiday destinations, take in cityscapes, or observe traffic, weather conditions or even volcanic activity throughout the day and night - unscripted, and experienced in real time.
We can 'be' there, travel the world through the screen of our laptop, tablet or mobile phone. Particularly in this Time of Covid, it might be regarded as a rather poignant 'freedom'.
While we can access these webcams and their streamed output, we have no control over their positioning or viewpoint, or the quality or technical nature of the equipment used. The viewer is not in control, other than to choose which webcam to access.
Based on this freely available online opportunity, One Day: 40 Sunrises presents the experience of sunrise on a particular day in various locations throughout the world, as experienced live through these webcams. The locations were chosen to reflect as broad a geographical spread as possible. The paintings are based on real-time screenshots grabbed from online streaming, harvested from the internet on a randomly selected day, 15 July 2020, tracking sunrise around the globe. Numerically, the 40 paintings also acknowledge the phenomenon of ‘quarantine’, a word deriving from the Italian 'quaranta giorni' ('forty days'), the period that ships were required to remain in isolation before passengers and crew could disembark during a much earlier pandemic, the Black Death.
The result is a record of this transient experience over the course of one day, paintings of digitally mediated images rendered in the 'traditional' medium of oil on canvas. It celebrates the possibility of shared experience, and reminds us that, wherever we are in the world, we are all connected. - Ian Wieczorek (catalogue text)
Slideshow of the individual paintings:
(Each work is 24cm x 18cm in size, oil on canvas)
One Day : 40 Sunrises was funded by The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
