127 cm tall orange painted bent steel sculpture. It stands on a wooden plinth.

The front of the plinth has a label, which reads, ‘Anguished Skein’ on top and the artist’s name, ‘Patrick Maher’, below it.

Notes:  Angus Skene, University Finance Officer and a founder of the Ikon Gallery, retired in 1978. The donations collected to celebrate this occasion were used to commission this sculpture, named Anguished Skein by friends. It has been sited in the Finance Department corridor since the late 1970s.

When Skene was asked to write an interpretation of the sculpture by the University curator in 1998, he wrote this poem,

‘Look! Punk-orange by the stair
I stand – leg, spine and coiled hair
My soule is concrete 3-2-1
And yet for larynx, brain and lung
There’s only space, there’s only air;
At last they’ve silenced me, in fun.’