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Invited by the curators at Angel Row to hold a solo exhibition, this was the first major showing of Ireland’s work in the UK. The exhibition was conceived of as four forms of description, exploring the use of space, objects, images and text. The exhibition included two major new commissions:

1) A site-specific sculptural installation, produced with assistance from the Henry Moore Foundation, ‘Straight Lines Are Curves From Very Large Circles’. The work takes as its starting point a fragment from Heidegger, ‘The World As Picture,’ in which Ireland strips the earth down to a series of formal components, then categorised so that each group of physical phenomena could be represented through a series of man-made materials

2) ‘Why It Is As It Is’ (2005) a continuous loop of found images projected on to the gallery wall. Images found in holiday brochures, adverts and magazines are collaged together so that each image constitutes one frame of the film. Each image has been re-photographed so that the size and position of the sun is identical within each of the 500 frames.

The work produces an almost impossible to see frantic overview of representations of the world revolving around a static, sculptural cone of light. Also featured were five sculptures that have evolved from Ireland’s use of mass produced objects that can be found in standardised sizes the world over.

Working with novelist Jeremy Sheldon and art writer Sarah James, the publication provides a forum for a short story and an essay. Both texts explore ways in which we tell stories to define that which surrounds us. Each text was generated by presenting the writers (and the graphic designers) with copies of three short stories and a set of images of the works.