Pavel Büchler, a Manchester sound artist who deals in "making nothing happen", has been announced as the third winner of the £16,500 Northern Art Prize.
The Prague-born teacher and sonic experimentalist entered seven exhibits into this year’s competition. Three were previously unseen and one – You Don't Love Me (above) – used a reel-to-reel tape deck, bottle of whisky and loop of audio in an installation based around a lone introductory voice from a 1970s bootleg gig recording.
Announcing the result at Leeds Art Gallery, the judges revealed they had been particularly enamoured with Büchler's Eclipse, a set of nine 1950s projectors casting circles of light on a wall in a reconstruction of the solar system.
The work inserted spherical objects inside the projectors to alternate between dark and light depending on where visitors positioned themselves.
Pavel Büchler
"Büchler has been consistently influential to a huge amount of people throughout his career, as a practitioner and teacher," said a joint statement from the judges, who felt the 2010 prize had "enhanced the contemporary visual arts scene in the North."
"We were particularly impressed with Eclipse, which we felt to be a very strong piece of work."
Pencil dreamer Rachel Goodyear, sound innovation duo Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson and punk artist Matt Stokes earned £1,500 each as runners-up.
The exhibition of work by all the finalists continues at Leeds Art Gallery until February 21 2010.
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