Exhibition invites people to look beyond cliches around old age and retirement

“As people live longer, the traditional idea of the sunset years as the final chapter of life has changed,” observes the Kinvara artist.

“Retirement can now stretch across decades, raising questions about how we occupy this extended period of our lives and find meaning beyond the routines of work. In a culture dominated by youth, advertising and consumerism, the needs and experiences of older people can seem increasingly invisible,” he adds.

Christopher has First Class degree in Fine Art, from Nottingham Trent University, an MA Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London and an MA in Production & Direction, from the University of Galway’s Huston Film school.

His work mainly focuses on on portraiture and the human condition, as he explores how time, erosion and the fragility of our existence can transform people, places and objects into poignant remnants of lived experience.

“I remember feeling sorry for my own parents when they retired,” he recalls.

“Without hobbies or particular interests to occupy their time, they often found themselves babysitting their grandchildren. Their experience made me reflect on the difficulty of negotiating this new phase of life, when the structure and purpose that work once provided have disappeared.”

In this exhibition, Christopher has painted “candid moments of older people caught in contemplation, sometimes while on holiday, suspended between reflection and anticipation. Some figures appear quietly waiting for something to happen, while others embrace the company of friends, sharing a sense of camaraderie as they face an uncertain future together.”

Other paintings in the show “explore the loneliness and isolation that can accompany old age, revealing the quiet vulnerability beneath everyday encounters”, he expands.

“Ultimately, ‘Sunsetters’ is about a stage of life that awaits many of us. It invites us to look beyond the stereotypes of retirement and consider what it means to grow old in a society that so often looks elsewhere. These paintings are not simply observations of other people’s lives, but reflections on our own future selves,” he explains.

Christopher, who is currently exhibiting in a ‘Centenary of Abbey Scholars’ at the British School at Rome, often takes a retrospective perspective in his portraits.

His idea is to invite viewers to imagine how a life might be remembered in the future. Influenced by film noir, widescreen cinema, Alfred Hitchcock and the paintings of Edward Hopper, he creates images that resemble storyboard scenes from other people’s lives.

Christopher aims to capture moments that might seem ordinary, holding his subjects in a suspended instant of reflection or uncertainty.

Through carefully observed encounters, he works to make mundane become universal, revealing the loneliness, vulnerability and quiet drama that lie beneath the surface of everyday life.

His work has been widely recognised; he was a finalist in the Sir William Orpen Prize 2025 and shortlisted for the John Richardson French Residency 2024 Award.

In 2019, Christopher was shortlisted for the Zurich Portrait Prize, with his painting being shown in the finalists’ exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland. He also featured in Sky Arts TV Portrait artist of the year programme 2017.

He has received a wide range of artist residencies over the years and has undertaken several artist-in-prison schemes and artist-in-schools schemes. His work is owned by the Arts Council, the OPW, and the European Central Bank

Curated by fellow artist and curator, Margaret Nolan, ‘Sunsetters’ will run upstairs in the Town Hall Theatre until Friday, December 4. All are welcome to the opening on November 7 and to visit during the run.