For 'A line Describing Nothings' members of the public were offered 'free past life regressions', through on-line and printed advertising. These sessions came with one stipulation, that participants sit with artists immediately after the regression an assist them in rendering drawings based on the places and people of their experience. Sixty applications were received, ten volunteers and five artists took part in a continuous process of regression, discussion and visual manifestation over an intensive April weekend.

Each of the ten individuals revealed detailed descriptions of rich and varied past lives whilst under hypnosis. As experiment, this process was an attempt to construct something real out of the ethereal, to give name, form and aesthetic to that which lies easier in the murky realm of the spiritual or psychological. As an analytical practice employing a practical research methodology, It allowed a form of normalization. The resulting fifteen meter drawing uses a visual and textual narrative to convey the experience of the regressed participant, through the immediacy of the artist's drawn responses.

Notes made during process: Pencil drawings on paper.
1.20 Meters wide by various lengths

Titles - left to right
Myth of Fire Mountain (detail)
Brave New Feet
Brave New Feet (detail)
Lillith
Tactics
The Wanderings of Paul
Untitled
Myth of Fire Mountain

Regression Drawing. Pencil and marker on paper / lenght 15 meters.

Paul Murnaghan's projects often take the form of invitations. In Memorious (2006), the invitation was an advertisement, in which the artist offered part of his memory to hold the recollection of another. During the next year, Auto Da Fe (2007), was an invitation to believe - as Murnaghan created an artwork, in the soon-to-be-demolished Pallas Heights Gallery, that no one would be allowed to see. Sitting between belief, knowledge and faith and drawing on the generosity of exchange, this latest project,'A Line Describing Nothings', continued these themes by asking people to undertake 'a past life regression', and then to assist in the drawing of artworks based on the recovered, or discovered 'memories'. Wonderful, and somehow surreal, these works are not attempts to solve the mysteries and myths of past lives, collective memory and master narratives, but are instead simply responses to the information received.

Gemma Tipton, extract from ''A line Describing Nothings' , the LAB' Catalogue.

Other works in this exhibition attempt to engage in dialogue through ontological comment, resulting in a form of flawed candour drawing tangentially from the ether. This process investigates fragmentary points of intersection between the spiritual, scientific and psychological. Materials such as air, magnetism (the regression drawing was hung with 200 magnets), dry ice and light are subtlety used to convey and construct concepts relating to the consideration of something just beyond our peripheral knowing.

The ground floor, project space and first floor of the gallery were connected through gaps left in each of the works. Each piece stands autonomous and yet incomplete, as with most ideology or belief systems.
This lack of completion is also evident within a series of large pencil drawings which were shown in the first floor space. These drawings were rendered over the same period of time as the construction of the other works and they are intended as notes (top right of page) informed by elements of the concepts that arose during the process. They contain some skewed references filtered through myth-media, academia and past and present propaganda. If the works below are 'a line describing nothings', these may be seen as' points on a curve'.

A line describing nothings (part 1)

A line describing nothings (part 2)

Religuary (ceremony)



A line describing nothings (part 1)
Line as light




A line describing nothings (part 2)