Midnight Moonlight Smalltown Rain

Midnight Moonlight Smalltown Rain

A project encompassing poetry, public installation and film. Inspired by Dumfries’ identity as a ‘ghost town’, alongside the town’s relationship to senses of displacement, the presence of history and of ghosts, Midnight Moonlight was a collaboration with photographers Colin James Tennant and Tom JD Armstrong, inspired by a long-from, free-written poem written by O’Neill undertaken three months before whilst sat in the window of an empty shop unit on Dumfries High Street from 7PM - 7AM, the project finalised with a public installation as part of D-Lux Festival of Light, 2017.

A poem, emerging new from the stones of an empty warehouse by the High Street reflects the sodium glow of the streetlights. The poem changes, words are hidden behind the glass of the adjacent building and new verses un-foil from the whole. A contemplation on absence, love, ghosts and the limitations of language universal, silently dance on the walls from midnight to morning whilst hands plead on the television aerials of empty apartments.

View of installation, Dumfries Town Centre.

View of installation on home aerial, Dumfries Town Centre.