My last solo show Ecce Homo was in 2016 in the City Assembly House in Dublin. The work was primarily based on man and animal. The following year  I was awarded a residency in the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris. I spent much of my time in Paris at the Musée Cernuschi and the Etruscan Collection in the Louvre doing research.  This has informed my present practice of obsession with heads. nnThese new works are about two elements coming together: the Raven and the Human. Some of the works are a comment on the idiocy of war as seen through the eyes of the broken-helmet man whose image is repeated, once alone and once with a raven-like bird. In this figure (Fallout III), as in the Jester piece, there is a series of threads where insignia would once have been. In another head, a hand is held across the heart and is wearing a refashioned (unidentifiable military) earring. nnThe Raven pieces should not be viewed as the raven overwhelming the human form. They could be construed as symbiosis of man and animal or it can be read as man elevating himself above his quotidian existence. nnRavens are harbingers of knowledge, of death, of transformation. They are portals into another place. My idea was to make works that would suggest a blend and coming together of human with bird, where it becomes impossible to disconnect the two different entities. Some of the works are titled “Conspiracy”  because a group of Ravens is called ‘a conspiracy’.