THE MAGIC touch that brought a tyrannosaurus rex roaring into life at Liverpool Museum is to be felt in Perth.

Perth-born artist Jim Bond was announced yesterday as winner of the J. D. Fergusson Arts Award for 2005 at the city’s Museum and Art Gallery, enabling him to develop new work for a solo exhibition at the Fergusson Gallery later in the year.

Jim graduated with an honours degree in jewellery from Middlesex Polytechnic in 1991, but now constructs kinetic and mechanical sculptures, combining machine aesthetics and organic forms.

His ingenious constructions often include light, sound and smell as well as being highly visual and he has received numerous public art commissions.

These include a life-size roaring head of a tyrannosaurus rex for Liverpool Museum and a mechanical gannet for the Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick. The bird’s mouth opens to reveal a wriggling fish and it squawks loudly with sound that was recorded on the Bass Rock.

His most recent commission is for a mechanical sculpture for Cortonwood Junior School in Barnsley.

Jim describes his creations as “objects which are a visual and audio sensation,” with singing heads breaking into song, fish illuminating, lenses distorting, and hidden secrets revealed.

Early plans for the exhibition at the Fergusson Gallery promise an unusual and truly inspirational show.

Jim plans to use the award to enable him to construct a series of new sound and light sculptures.

These will explore the journey he has made from his birth in a house beside the River Tay to the point of the Fergusson Gallery, just a mile downstream.

On winning the award he said, “I have always longed for the opportunity to produce a complete body of work for an exhibition.”

The annual award was established by the J. D. Fergusson Arts Award Trust in 1995 to support Scottish artists working in all disciplines.

It alternates each year between a travel bursary and an exhibition award, with 99 completed applications received by the trust this year.

The winner was selected from a shortlist of nine.

The newly restored Fergusson Gallery is due to reopen in May with Jim Bond’s exhibition scheduled to run from November until April 2006.