Forerunner, Brute Clues (2016), Project Arts Centre, Dublin, curated by Tessa Giblin. Image: Ros Kavanagh

In 2016 we were selected as part of an open call for the 50th anniversary of the Project Arts Centre. We applied with a large and ambitious architectural oriented project and spent a month abroad in the south west of the US researching the work. Visiting various sites from Taliesien West (Frank Lloyd Wright’s Nevada Campus) and Arcosanti (Paolo Soleiri’s Community) to Robert Smithson’s The Spiral Jetty, The Centre for Land Use Interpretation, Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels and various works by Donald Judd, Richard Serra and Carl Andre, The Hoover Dam and Andrea Zittel in Joshua Tree National Park. These artists and sites presented a rough historical narrative to the construction industry and its overlapping influence on Contemporary Art over the past 100 years from Frank Lloyd Wright's Arte Util casting methods to Paolo Soleiri’s artist economy. By travelling to these sites we began to develop a love for the materiality of these artworks and the timescales they were enduring. In harsh deserts and against huge environmental forces stone seemed a ubiquitous choice and an interest grew in the notion of stone forming in the Capitalocene. We developed the work Brute Clues as a reaction to the timelessness of the large monuments we saw across these sites. Using Plywood, Plaster, Steel, Stone and Water we interwoven techniques learnt from set building (a traditionally short term form of construction) with the construction industry (pouring concrete). These techniques were offset by our use of materials exclusively found in the construction of galleries, concrete floors, plaster walls, plywood plinths and Steel lighting/electrics. Through mixing together these forms of construction we allowed a timeless quality into the work and also tried to strip the gallery of its apparent permanence and show its mutability.