This old lampshade had been used in an installation in PSsquared, three years ago, to create a living room where an artist hung out for the duration of the show. It was handed in by the gallery, and like most stuff that had spent any time sitting around in their chaotic storage room, it was badly battered and torn.

Scruffy everyday.

When I stripped away the fabric, what remained was an abstract shape of almost mathematical simplicity, but also immediately recognizable as the skeleton of a lampshade. I was thinking about what I could turn it into, and the thought struck me that there is no other object around us based on that very shape. There are loads of shapes and forms like that around us, that for compounded reasons of practicality and habit, stay the same year in and year out. Really, there are loads of possible shapes for a lampshade, and many are indeed used, but this very specific classical lampshade shape has been around for a long time and will surely also remain. Is it our need for familiarity that makes us create consistency in our surroundings? Originally the design was surely a result of practicalities of production combined with peoples aesthetic ideals, but all those values have long since given way to reasons of habit and convention.

The orange glow is only visible in the dark.

I decided to keep the shape, but alter the function. By dressing the lamp in a non transparent medium, completely covering all openings, I sterilized its usefulness, and turned it into a monument of its own shape. The addition of basic shapes both above and below is meant to reinforce this impression. I hope that the choice of material is alien enough, while still retaining a certain closeness to what one would expect, to form a link between old usage and new abstract form. It is instantly recognizable but completely different.

Object no. 5

The material is heavy rubber or Bakelite.

Peter Mutschler, who runs PSsquared, handed in a few objects on the first day, just to get me started before anyone from the general public found us. Since one of the objects, a broken toilet flush tank from when the pipes had frozen the last time, was so obviously a ready-made toilet furniture, given to me by a fellow artist, I just had to make an homage to the Fountain.

Will probably end up in the toilet again.

Apart from the joke of course, I also wanted to take the opportunity to point out a real problem. Most of the heavy day to day lifting in the art world is done by individuals who do all of, or most of, their work for free. The rewards they get is social and artistic, and surely much more gratifying than money. The problem, however, is that our society doesn’t recognize charitable work as worth anything, so when these people grow old they end up on the minimum pension. Even though they spent years and years helping other people realize their dreams, and gave their communities the basic structures necessary for a cultural life, these same communities will do nothing to thank them at the end of their careers. As long as you work charitably in a community, you will be part of this community and feel much more connected than most people just going about their daily chores, since you interact with so many different people in different roles. This changes dramatically the day you retire, especially since the consequence of extreme poverty is not only the lack of stuff and security, but mostly also social isolation. This is not just because of how we morally value poor people, but also because it is almost impossible to move about or do anything in our society without spending money. So, the next time you come to PSsquared, as a visitor or as an artist, make sure to use the toilet, and drop a contribution in the box.

Be sure to ask for it next time you visit PSsquared

Object no. 4

Poppy Lloyd came in fairly early before there was so much to see in the gallery and was very enthusiastic about what I was doing. The two objects she gave me were among the ugliest of my whole collection, but I have the feeling she had picked them out as a sort of challenge. Object no 14 was the outer shell of an electrical fake candle. It was a useless part of what had once been a simulacrum, faking the cosiness of evenings at home with lit candles. I had it sitting for a while, trying to come up with something clever to transform it into, but the more I looked at it the more I had the feeling that there was something sinister about it.

More sinister than funny

Instead of changing it I wanted to show its true nature, display it on a pedestal with all its nastiness exposed. I ended up creating quite an elaborate piece, appropriating the style of Goth artists using dripping, black paint over satanic symbols on an old ceramic lamp stand, almost like a theatre stage to influence peoples view of the lost candle I had started with.

Faux Gothic Heavy Metal art.

To further enhance the eerie feeling of an evil object (like objects could have any morals at all) I mounted an elaborate battery driven mechanism inside the lamp stand, faintly illuminating a glowing red eye down in the centre of it, only visible if one peek deep down into the candle. For me the exaggerated visual language, and the post ironical way I use it, is proof of how much our imagination will help fill in to fool us despite our better knowledge, because despite having created it myself, I still feel a bit weird glimpsing it behind my shoulder when I turn around, or leaving it with the internal red light turned on when I leave for the night.

Object no. 14

Worn three times.

Marta Dworakowska actually liked the sneakers she handed in for remaking, they were cool and chique, but just not comfortable. She had tried wearing them three times before giving up. I wanted to keep what she liked about them, and at the same time address the problem of discomfort. Because of this I didn’t want to turn them into something radically different, but keep the shoeiness of them. Thinking about what would be the most comfortable thing to walk on, it struck me that surely, it had to be another foot, not in the sense of being the softest thing you can walk on, but rather in stimulating the most pleasant sensory input. I went ahead and completely cut of the soles of the sneakers before joining them together with elastic string (for that extra wriggle-room).

Find a friend with the same shoe size.

To use them you first need to find a friend with the same shoe size. Then sit down on a comfortable rug, or the grass, or something, and step into the shoe together. Relax and feel the soles of each others feet, realizing that every slight pressure and movement is felt by both of you, and by a part of your bodies that is almost never treated to a delicate touch. Socks are optional, depending on how well you know each other.

Object no. 19

The Inuksuk is supposed to help show a safe path...

Ronan gave me a broken Inuksuk, a sort of stone representation of a human figure made by First Nations in Northern Canada and the Arctic. Out in the landscape large Inuksuks are built to guide travellers and show a safe way forward. Small ones are made as a kind of lucky mascots given to someone setting out on a journey, and this is how Ronan got his one, before he left Canada to return to Belfast. He meant that it had been a kind of sculpture, and since it was now broken, it was open to be reinterpreted by me.

...now much safer.

I wanted to emphasize the vulnerability of the original figure, that what had been intended as a protective mascot had actually gotten broken itself, and keep the human form in the new sculpture, but introduce an element of outside action to safeguard the situation. By carefully wrapping it in strong thread I not only healed the break in the sculpture, but added a protective padding making it highly unlikely that the figure would break again if dropped on the floor. Perhaps the Inuksuk really had worked, in way of sacrificing itself and soaking up all the danger facing Ronan on his trip home. If so, this was my way of thanking the magic of the little man, by mending him and returning him to duty.

Object no. 17

This was a though one. The young art student who handed in an empty Buckfast bottle told me that it had just stood model for one of her paintings, a painting she had tried to paint in memory of a friend who had just met a violent death, and who had been in the habit of often drinking this tonic. She hadn’t been very happy with the painting, and expressed a wish to capture her feelings in words instead. I felt that I had to do something here that wasn’t funny or quirky, like so many of my other pieces. Still, I want to emphasize that this piece is not made in memory of a young man who passed away to soon, but in response to her emotions about that.

Before I cleaned it the bottle had contained the mouldy remains of a flower stalk.

I peeled off the sticker and wrote on it, in a simple hand, like someone sending a message could have, then sealed the sticker inside the bottle.

NON FUI, FUI, NON SUM, NON CURO

This was a common inscription on the graves of Roman soldiers, and fitting I felt. Nothing much more can be said I think.

Object no. 18

One of the things artist Shiro Masuyama handed in to the repair shop before going off to Japan for a while, was a pair of burned out light bulbs. -They never last very long before they burn out, was what he said, and bang, there was the sculpture ready and finished for me of course, just waiting to be put together.

Light bulbs are one of these mundane things we never think about, but which are slowly passing the horizon of everyday into nostalgia, like candles and kerosene lamps before them. While candles burn out so quickly and precisely that their burning can be used as a measure of time, with a good quality one burning all night, light bulbs generally last just long enough for us to think of them as having a life. After filling these ones with sand I timed them to around 2 minutes, which I found a suitable quantity and worth calibrating after. I was thinking of all the times we say, -just give me two more minutes and I’ll be done. The hole between the two bulbs is cut in a bamboo plug, which is a very hard wood, but still soft enough to slowly, slowly erode as the sand flow back and forth. That way, if the glass was used regularly, the minutes would start passing faster and faster, just like these short two minute excuses tend to do in our own lives, as we grow older.

Object no. 3

Ms Lismore came by and presented me with a conundrum. She had passed by the shop a couple of times, read the big poster explaining what was happening here, and decided to come in to ask for my assistance. Now, she was not interested in taking part in my conceptual game and trade a broken object for a sculpture. Instead, she had an artwork that was broken and that needed to be repaired. Even if it wasn’t really what I had set out to do, could I maybe just fix it? And then obviously not turn it into a conceptual contemporary artwork. The plaster plaque of a horse’s head (a mass produced remake after a classical Greek model, if I am not mistaken) belonged to her sister, it was not worth much but had emotional value, and Ms Lismore’s niece had accidentally broken it while the sister was away. If I could just patch it together before the sister came back from her holidays, that would be grand!

The plaque after being glued together again.

This was clearly not what I had set out to do with my project, but then again, the request addressed several interesting issues. What if artists were paid by the community, to supply the normal citizens with artistic services? What would that look like, if not only affluent people could afford to order a portrait for the 40th birthday, or ask for a sculpture to commemorate a wedding, or just something to make the workplace a bit more interesting? I guess a lot of the requests would be simple, small jobs like the one Ms Lismore had asked me to do, so I decided to agree, and I restored her plaque to the best of my abilities. Given that I am a sculptor and not a professional art restorer, I explained that I could repair the physical shape with glue and carefully brushed on plaster in the cracks, but that the repairs would still be clearly visible having a different colour, repainting the plaque is something I didn’t dare take on. Hopefully, it looks even more antique this way.

Object no. 15

Independent film-maker El Porter-McCullough came by to do a short interview for her blog (http://www.creativechangeni.com/) and took the opportunity to hand in two objects for repair. One of them, a broken VHS tape she had bought second hand but never even had a chance to watch, immediately inspired me.

Broken VHS tape with the film Con Air, supposedly

While El was conducting the interview she also told me how she shot all her materials for her blog on her iPhone, slightly adapted with a clever camera case to attach different lenses. I don’t think she was aware of it herself, but I found it highly ironic, and a sign of our times, that a contemporary film-maker herself waxing lyrical about the latest video mediums was at the same time sentimental about the vestiges of the technology of yesterday. Being of the same generation I can totally emphasize, having grown up with VHS and the first generation home computers, I am very happy keeping updated with the latest, but all my memories are of the old, disappearing formats.

iPhone killed the VHS, object no 11

To find a new use for the old VHS tape, and to connect it to El’s everyday use of the latest technology, I decided to use the tape itself (which is the invisible core of the VHS) as my main material, but not as intended to store images – instead I turned it into a small woven bag for her iPhone. For me, this is a suitable way to keep the technology of the past in our present, allowing for our nostalgia without loosing touch with the modern.

Object no. 11

Artist Shiro Masuyama handed in three objects, one of which was a broken iPhone cable.The USB connection had been stepped on and was crushed. What to do with this broken leftover of what had once been an accessory of the most popular luxury object of our day and age?

iPhone cable with broken USB connection

In a way it made me think of the recent IT bubble in Ireland, and the whole myth of the Celtic Tiger, which turned out to be very expensive for the Irish people. I found some nice knot patterns on Youtube, further implicating the myth of the Celts in the modern digital age, and proceeded to turn the cable into a “Tree of Life” Celtic knot. I mounted the necklace I now had in a simple box frame to further separate it from the everyday and emphasize its mythical qualities.

Celtic Apple, object no 2

Object no. 2