Turner Prize-winner Martin Boyce, musician Raymond MacDonald and filmmaker David Mackenzie received one of the new Vital Spark awards to realise their proposal to create work that bridges the gaps between gallery, cinema and concert hall – and Scarecrows saw off anyone who wants to maintain those distinctions of space.
Five buoys – huge sculptural objects out of water – dominated, and Boyce's signature was all over the triangular tessellation of strip lighting that flickered on and off.
MacDonald's devotion to free improvisation was omnipresent too, four musicians contributing a soundtrack from the corners of the room, often exploiting the percussive possibilities of their instruments. The cinematic element appeared on a triptych of screens on the front of the balcony seating, random images eventually giving way to suggested narratives: a dog worrying a bone, the journeys the artists had undertaken, and – most strikingly – Boyce's father John, a man with very fine features for the big screen. The interaction between the three disciplines seems thus far under-realised, however, despite amusing jazz mimicry from the other two while MacDonald demonstrates his circular breathing and the nine-hands free-gamelan treatment of drum kit, piano and marimba that ends the show.
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