Canadian sculptor and video maker of Irish birth. He studied art at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London before emigrating to Canada in 1958. In 1964 he moved permanently to New York. An important precursor of conceptual art and a self-styled ‘media sculptor’, he became known in the 1960s for his environments and for his ‘Disposables’: cheap, vacuum-formed plastic reliefs of commonplace objects produced in multiples. His most notable environment was Slipcover (1966), a silvery, reflective plastic slipcover for an entire gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, which also incorporated delayed playback sound and a constantly changing play of light and images. Works like these, using the techniques and materials of modern technology, earned him the nickname ‘Plastic man’, but his concerns were more with processes than materials. His interest in communications and with the art world as a system led to ironic commentaries that took such varied forms as a consulting service for artists, an underground newspaper and a closed-circuit TV sculpture that recorded its viewers.From Grove Dictionary of Art