"During the summers of 1966-67, I had a job guarding a fence. This fence was raised in the Icelandic highlands, near the area where I was born and bred. Such fences were built in the mountains, between and beyond the valleys, in order to contain the contagious diseases that sprang up from time to time among the livestock. I was brought up in an agricultural region in the western part of Iceland. The main sort of farming in this area was sheep farming. My job at the fence was to shoo the sheep away from it, and to mend it when needed. The fence isolated the areas where the illnesses would manifest, to contain them in as small an area as possible, preventing their spread. This sometimes resulted in a large-scale network of fences in the uninhabited highlands, which were quite some distance from the farmsteads themselves. According to the law, such fences had to be patrolled along certain designated sections, every second day from June until mid-September. Men usually went on horseback because of the long distances involved. Where I lived, there was a lack of horses fit for the job, so I decided to try it on foot. At first, this foot patrol tested my endurance to the limit, but in time it became routine. There were occasions, though, when I had to escape from storm and rain by descending into a valley, cutting the walk short. This was sometimes a punishing experience, because the daily distances involved might have been around 50 km; and depending on the weather, it was usually a 16-hour walk. In the little free time I had between this task and working on the farm, I made works of art. I had kept myself busy making art since childhood, had attended the college of art, and had already participated in my first group exhibition. The three works that remain from that period can be seen projected in this space. The reason for exhibiting these pieces here is that they have no connection whatsoever with art that I had been interested in, practicing, or been in contact with before or after this two-summer engagement of mine. They are totally disconnected from the art history that I knew, from contemporary history, and from what I had been thinking about or working on before or since that time. I have no opinion or comment about their artistic merit. They stand alone from this episode in my life, and might be regarded as curiosities. I am tempted to think that the solitude of those long walks had something to do with these creations. No sketches for these pieces were made: rather, they were visualised in my head. I produced them in my brother’s workshop, using found material that lay around."