I was invited to Cill Rialaig for a three week residency in October 2008. I arrived feeling expectant, but empty of any notion of how I might work and feeling anxious that possibly nothing would result from the residency.

Paradoxically the emptiness became a resource as I surrendered myself to the stillness and silence which enfold Cill Rialaig. On my second day turfs, delivered for the heating stove, kick-started me into working - I used them as units of construction which I wedged and balanced in the empty door and window spaces of a nearby derelict cottage.

These fragile and transient barriers occupied the spaces where doors and windows had once protected the families who lived there.