Nearly mystical alternative visions of a collective day

DAVID SHERRY butamusingandverytouching showinwhichdaughter-father team Lucy and Addrian Hutson reflected upon their own theatrical work (she as a performance artist, he as a children’s entertainer) and their own relationship and states of mental health.

In ‘the unit’, a separate building across the car park, artist Jessica Higgins presented Dedications (JJJJ), a performance piece featuring a live jazz score by the Glasgow band Banana Oil, in which a number of performers moved through the space, breaking off into short, choreographed excerpts of conversation and of harmonised spoken word. At the end of this transporting experience, Banana Oil played their own primal live set.

Among the highlights was a live performance by electronic producer Kevin ‘The Bug’ Martin’s King Midas Sound

(JJJJ) project, a dense and heart-shaking soundtrack of dub-influenced electronics shrouded in smoke and neon, over which poet Roger Robinson offered vocal interventions about the loneliness of urban life without love or connection; the work played vividly upon the imagination, conjuring stories and meaning from the most minimal of suggestions.

Northern Irish, Glasgowbased artist David Sherry

(JJJJ) was the penultimate performer, although what his job description might allow him to call a performance art piece was more of a stand-up comedy set – an extremely funny one, albeit with a particularly highbrow frame of reference, so well-suited to the crowd here. He touched upon Brexit (pointing out that the 8,000 referendum voters who marked ‘don’t know’ on theirballotswerevisionaries), the financial system and the nature of identity itself.

Finally, the annual Easterhouse Conversation

(JJJJ) brought a local engagement process to an end with a typically thrilling set of new electronic tracks from Glasgow’s Free Love, aided by Sacred Paws’ Eilidh Rodgers on drums, with their lyrics informed by conversations with locals. It was a very rooted finale to a festival of the satisfyingly otherworldly. DAVID POLLOCK

“…extremely funny, with a particularly highbrow frame of reference, well-suited to the crowd here”