2015 Laureate of the Marseille Municipal Art Studios Award.

The Marseille Municipal Art Studios Award is presented every two years with every new session of residencies. The laureate artist is given the opportunity to show his work in one of Marseille’s public museums. 2015 laureate Thomas Teurlai will present his piece Bullroarer at the Musée Cantini.

“When you walk around one of his pieces – and sometimes even earlier, when you haven’t yet entered the exhibition space but your senses are already grasped by an unusual smell or by the depth of a sound – this is a sensation you experience in a very physical and immediate way”, wrote Patrice Blouin about Teurlai’s work. In this piece, the artist once again explores the connection between sound and machines.

A bullroarer or rhombus, one of the most instruments known to man, sometimes sounds like a choir of whispers sung to a proto-hardcore tune. The balance weight that keeps the instrument’s string from being tangled is reminiscent of how some urban tribes mark their territory by hanging down their shoes from electric cables.