Hello It’s Nice To See You

July 1 – 14, 2007
Curfew Tower, Cushendall, Northern Ireland

I was an artist-in-residence in Curfew Tower for two weeks in July 2007. The task given to each artist that arrives at Curfew Tower is to respond to the immediate locality and people surrounding the building.

The tower is isolating (no phone, internet, television, mobile phone signal), the local people are lovely and the landscape is unspeakably beautiful. The combination of isolation and being an outsider in a town full of strangers made me both want to connect with as many people as possible as well as hide from all of them.

The people of Cushendall have a real interest in what goes on in the tower and most, despite living there all their lives, have never been inside. I decided that the most efficient way to establish a personal connection with hundreds of people would be to put banners on the outside of the tower, one on the Mill Street side and one on the Shore Street side, where the local population could read them as they drove by, walked by, and went about their usual business every day. The banners described in two sentences the minutae of what was going on inside, and were changed every two days for the two-week duration of my residency.