Why Did the Scarecrow Win an Award?

Georgia Gendall

Filmed solely on motion sensor cameras over the course of a growing season; Why Did the Scarecrow Win an Award? explores the farm as a theatrical space where the relationship between local ecosystems and global food production, queer rurality and land access plays out through the eyes of our protagonist: a scarecrow and a crop of wheat. This film is part eavesdropped, part scripted; part love letter, part squabble; part sublime, part apocalyptic.

Georgia Gendall‘s practice is rooted in the rural landscape of Cornwall – where she grew up and now lives and works – Georgia uses event structures, sculptures, performance, video and social practice to bring people together through multi-sensory encounters that focus on how the art intervention can draw attention to, subvert, celebrate or disrupt a context to embody queerness and unravelling our preconceptions of the rural as idyll.

In 2023 Gendall was awarded a Henry Moore Foundation Artists Award for sculpture, was shortlisted for the Paul Hamlyn Award, received the Artist Film Commission from Exeter Phoenix Gallery and received a Arts Council England Project Grant to run her project space Allotment Club and Falmouth Worm Charming Championships 2023.

Recent solo/ group exhibitions /events/ commissions include: Camden Worm Charming, Camden Art Centre, London, (2023); Falmouth Worm Charming Championships, (2023, 2022 & 2021); Laterworks, Cafe Otto, London (2023); Exeter Open Contemporary, Exeter Phoenix Gallery, Exeter (2022); Thanks for the Apples, Falmouth Art Gallery, Falmouth (2021); When was the last time you lay down to look at the sky? Whitegold, St Austell (2020); In Other Words, Darling, Kestle Barton, Lizard, Cornwall & Auction House, Redruth, Cornwall (2019); also, also, also, Whitstable Biennale, Whitstable (2018).

ABOUT THE EXETER PHOENIX COMMISSION PREMIERE 2024

TWO SHORT NIGHTS 2024 | Fri 09 Feb | 6.30pm

VENUE: EXETER PHOENIX, STUDIO 74

*Subject to a £1.50 ticketing system charge. We don’t charge this to make a profit. Find out more >>