Julie Bacon, an artist specialising in performance and installation works, currently resident in Belfast, was artist in residence at the Sirius Arts Centre in June and July, 2005. During that time she met a number of people living in Cobh and district who have been involved with maritime life. A hymn for travellers and the absent was the result of this activity.

The installation occupied both galleries of this waterside space, a classical Palladianstyle villa built in the early nineteenthcentury, previously the headquarters of the Royal Cork Yacht Club. Gallery One, on the right hand side of the building, had both sets of windows blacked out. A small church bench was placed in front of the fireplace, and a film was projected onto the space above the mantel. The mantel itself was covered in a strip of lace cloth. Around the bench a few red and white feathers were scattered, and on it was a copy of The ancient mariner and other poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The film had no soundtrack. The camera concentrated on the hands of the people talking, rather than their faces. An old woman showed a scrapbook and a collection of old cuttings. Other people featured included an elderly man in naval uniform, possibly a retired harbour-master, a fisherman, a young man in a red and white check shirt with a pencil. Other hands were shown dealing with heavy ropes, then we were back to the old woman and her scrapbook. The loop, lasting maybe five minutes, repeated.

The central room of the gallery, which faces south over Cork Harbour, was empty apart from a wooden platform, approached by a wooden staircase. The sides of the platform were lined by the same lace material (net curtain?) as the mantelpiece next door. One person at a time occupied the space, sitting on a hard bench, facing the view over the harbour. Because the seat was about four feet above ground level, you were forced to look at the view though the architectural detail of the upper level of the windows. Postcards and pencils were to be found on the floor beside the chair, on which you could write.

While in the first room, I had resented the loss of the view from the windows, and felt unpleasantly coerced into watching the hands of the people filmed, while being denied a view of their faces, the soundtrack of their voices and a view of the surroundings in which they were speaking. The feathers and Coleridge contributed nothing. In the second room I was given the view I had been craving, but was again coerced into looking at it from a particular place, to no discernible purpose.

The gallery's handout claims that "Julie's work questions the functioning of archives, such as museums, civic records offices or commercial databases and highlights how they influence our sense of presence, our interactions and our memories." There was no evidence of this. Was the artist doing something so subtle and esoteric that I missed the point? Or was the show simply lacking in thought, coherence, energy, and creativity? It seemed arrogant to silence the interviewees. This decision turned what might have been an interesting video into a boring one, with only one idea behind it. The other room simply said "look at the view." Neither seemed to relate to the promise of the title, nor to gain from the proximity of the other. Sometimes when you don't get it, it is because there is nothing to get. The emperor had no clothes on. This was a shameful waste of funding and resources.

Alannah Hopkin is a writer based in County Cork.

Cobh - Julie Bacon, a hymn for travellers and the absent - Sirius Arts Center - September, October 2005.