The artist had just started a 3-year residence term in the Johns Square ‘Living cultural quarter’ artist’s apartments, granted by the Limerick city & county council based on artistic merit.
O’Brien was also venturing off to Prague to live and work in Perla National Gallery of Art for one month and to then exhibit the work made there as a solo show, which stayed open to the public in the gallery for three months.
Here is some of the work he created and exhibited for the show. You can see the particular materials he experimented with at that time:
