Approaching the glass vitrine and looking towards the top of the light coloured plinth housed within it, he did not see the carved wooden head he had expected from the title card’s description, but rather... not an absence of the sculpture exactly, for there was certainly something there. Perhaps what he encountered could best be described as a kind of dark hole sitting in the space directly above the plinth, but one that was convex in form rather than concave, or perhaps it could be described as a kind of autonomous silhouette that did not originate from any actual object. There was something there, and this darkened something was a declaration of a Nothing: it was a very present and very physically formed absence.

Standing before the presence of the absence of the carved head, and not knowing exactly how to deal with this conundrum, he was left to rely on the toolbox of his expectations. The figurative Nothing stood no longer for the carving that he assumed should have been there, but rather for all such like objects, in all such like museums, and in the act of papering the surface of this silhouette with his many memories of the object’s uncountable comrades, the dark and increasingly weighty mass came to stand at the forefront of a clattering collectivity that carried with it the dull marks of hammers upon wood, iron upon flesh, limbs pressing down onto limbs and rings marking themselves into bone – a whole fearful entangled wedge-shaped mass, wrenched forwards by a lengthy chain into the present moment – where he stood now, standing alone in a museum hall, staring at a dark and bulky Nothing in an illuminated glass vitrine.

Two actors sit in a production studio re-performing the original Russian dialogue (a language in which they have no knowledge) of two short sections of the 1972 film Solaris. Caught in the looped repetition of their projection, they struggle against the limits of this alien language and fragmented staging, in the attempt to create meaning and emotional verisimilitude. The characters they work to bring briefly to life - ghosts that inhabit only the space of the screen - argue over their memories, their clouded past and their lack of sense of Being.

> View It's Just a Shadow Away on Vimeo

Based upon a 1908 archival image of children engaged in a costumed procession during a seasonal festival in Buch, near Odenwald (Germany).

Studio research materials collected and created in the period early 2008 - late 2009, and exhibited as part of the group exhibition Aion Experiemnts, 2010 (Project Arts Centre - Dublin). The materials draw on a range of pseudo-scientific and marginal knowledge sourced from online communities.

Composed from sourced online videos providing demonstrations of the practice of Chromotherapy.

Sculptural installation based upon the bio-energetic "Orgone" theories of psychotherapist and psuedo--scientist Wilhelm Reich.

Design adapted from an instruction manuel sourced from an online "Survivalist" community forum, part of the artist's research into marginal knowledge communities.

Design based upon a flag partially visible during 3 seconds of director Michael Radferd's film adaptation of "1984". The flag represents the fictional omnipresent threat 'Eurasia' - the colours of the flag are matched to those of the flag when it appears on the telescreen device depicted within the film.

Construction replicating the original design of Wilhelm Reich's 'Orgone Accumulator', following 1950's construction manuel (original text presented in lightboxes). The sale of these devices was the cause of criminal charges brough against Reich in the 1950's. The designs are now widely available online.

Reconstruction based on Wilhelm Reich's 'Cloudbuster'designs, installed temporarily in the top floor of a soon-to-be-demolished social housing block.