German artist Rebecca Horn suffered serious lung damage as an art student as a result of working with toxic materials. During her year-long treatment in a sanatorium she used her artistic imagination to help her to escape the tedium and discomfort of her isolation ward, and to find solace in fantasy. The silent films of Buster Keaton, based on plots in which mundane events could suddenly become dangerous, seemed to her to offer a parallel with her own situation; finding herself in mortal danger while pursuing her normal business. Keaton became an important metaphor, in her work, for the hidden dangers in daily life. The shoes in ‘Take Me to the Other Side of The Ocean’ are the artist’s own, but are the same kind as those worn by Buster Keaton, while the metal spike suggests a pendulum measuring the passage of time and the blue pigment echoes the colour of the ocean over which the artist’s daydreams will take her. This work was purchased following the exhibition of Horn’s work at the IMMA in 2000.