Due to the distinctive rural context of North Tipperary, the Arts Office expressed a particular interest in artists developing work and exploring arts in rural contexts, arts in the context of regeneration, arts and ecology/arts and the environment and land art. The artists comments:

"In response to the original brief, this visual artist residency was very much directed towards art in the public realm. For an outsider like myself, that meant looking very closely and carefully at the context of North Tipperary in an attempt to discover where exactly the public realm was to be found. In some ways the public realm is both more and less obvious in a rural context; far more of it is open to view, but equally far less of it is public space of the kind one encounters in an urban setting.

Silvermines attracted me for many reasons, but perhaps it was the intriguing mix of public and private spaces that kept me coming back. The abandoned mine works that lie all around the area are both public and privately owned areas; they speak of the privatisation of resources that lie out of our sight, and the consequences of that."

The project was the artist's response to "a perceived complexity, a collision of history, ecology, myth and memory." The Space Shuttle, a multifunctional creative box, sent temporarily into orbit to outside locations, to be used by interdisciplinary artist groups and community organisations and initiatives, arrived in Silvermines on 4 July and took on the identity of the Imaginary Museum.

This was a project in which the local community was the central element and the collection in the 'museum' consists exclusively of what they bring. A steady stream of local people from the very young to very old passed through, and all of them questioned the artist carefully about the project and responded with great humour and openness.

A final public event took place on the weekend of the 18-19 August, 2007.

During 2008 and 2009 the artist continued working on an off-shoot/lead-on project that consisted of developing a walking trail guided by artistic signposts, initiated during the residency. These are currently being researched and finalised between the artist and the local community.

See the artist's website

In this project the the local community are the central element, and as such there was a good response from people of all ages.