At the centre of the exhibition is Raised Voices (2020) a large-scale immersive installation comprised of digital projection, sound and haze. McCall’s ‘solid light works’ occupy a space between cinema, sculpture and drawing, with beams of light creating sculptural forms as they are projected through mist within the space.

In Raised Voices, there are two competing and intersecting forms within the horizontal projection; an incomplete ellipse that varies in its diameter, and a straight diagonal line that splinters in two as it turns through 180 degrees. The forms develop according to a precise durational structure, shifting at a pace that can sometimes be indiscernible, yet presenting itself continuously within the conical field of light.

This was McCall’s first solid light work including sound since the 1970s, the soundtracks of which were previously the drone-like mechanical purring of the 16mm projector. The subsequent use of digital projectors, with their relative silence, gave an absence of sound, and it was through collaboration with Grubbs that McCall sought to fill this aural void.

In the far distance a riot seems to be unfolding as a chorus of sirens and car-horns make themselves felt and the faintly discernible roars of a baying crowd are heard, the eponymous raised voices, themselves supplanted by the rumbling engine of a low-flying helicopter. Though the work remains primarily silent, with the sonic events occurring far beyond the gallery walls, the repeated interruptions become unsettling.

A series of seven charcoal drawings for Raised Voices show the ‘footprints’ of the projection at seven consecutive moments, freeze-frames that return the light projection to its graphic referent.