Simon Martin's 2012 exhibition for Collective Gallery, Louis Ghost Chair, comprises three separate artworks: the film, the second of a trilogy that started with Carlton (2006), a photograph of designer Phillipe Starck’s gnome stool, which appears in the film and a photographic series of twelve African headrests from Scotland’s National Museum’s ethnographic collection. Questioning the representation of art and design artifacts is at the centre of Martin’s practice and, in particular, how objects are circumscribed by the prevailing practices and discourses of institutions such as the museum, the university and public service broadcasting. This essay extracts some of the Martin's references such as art critic John Berger's BBC TV series Ways of Seeing, expository documentary film and artist Donald Judd's essay 'Specific Objects' in an attempt to map some of the complex dialogues across this body of work, which in the end raises more questions than it answers.