Discover “A Series of Personal Questions Addressed to a Neolithic Clay Vessel” by James Webb, an artwork that poses spoken questions to a 4000-year-old vase, a witness to time and human stories. On display at the “Between Rivers” exhibition at Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo.

James Webb’s work is characterized by a poetic sensibility, an exploration of multiple histories, mythologies, places and contexts. Now Liljevalchs welcomes James Webb’s first major solo exhibition in his new hometown of Stockholm – The Moon Will Not Stay Hidden Forever.  

With The Moon Will Not Stay Hidden Forever, Webb takes on Sweden, Stockholm and Liljevalchs with his site-specific interventions and installations. Some of the artworks that visitors will encounter are a Viking sword transformed by a series of personal questions, an ensemble singing an 873-year-old hymn inside R1’s nuclear reactor hall, flags made from a vision of a saint, and the song of an alien bird in the Blue Gate garden.

Out in the garden between Liljevalchs and the Blue Gate, you can hear the song of a brown southern shark, native to Tasmania. Webb’s family was sent to Tasmania as convicts in the early 1900s. It is likely that the artist’s ancestors heard the bird’s song, and by placing the song in Liljevalch’s garden in Webb’s new hometown of Stockholm, a circle of movement through time and space is completed.

À bruit secret. Hearing in Art is the fourth in a series of five themed exhibitions at Museum Tinguely dealing in experimental ways with the human senses. Focusing attention on hearing, which plays an important role in multisensory experiences of art, the exhibition offers various immersive and interactive encounters with familiar and less familiar soundscapes. Historical works as well as pieces created specially for the show, by 25 international artists, invite visitors to pay attention to what they are hearing, opening up acoustic fields usually hidden from the human ear. What does the Rhine sound like as it flows through Basel? What’s to be heard beneath the surface of the ocean? Can urban noise or the voices of animals and humans be used to make artworks? How have human activity and climate change altered the sounds of the jungle? Can soundwaves be perceived other than by our ears, and how can acoustic phenomena be visualized? The exhibition includes sculptures, multimedia installations, photographs, works on paper, and paintings dating from the Baroque period to the present day.

Conceived by curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath as a “manifesto of fragility”, the Biennale positions fragility at the heart of a generative form of resistance that is emboldened by the past, responsive to the present, and primed for the future.

The artist James Webb starts a radio channel partly ghost story, partly architectural analysis of the area; if you can access the signal, then the message is for you. This untitled radio broadcast forms part of Sånger till Hökarängen (Songs to Hökarängen), a series of interventions in the neighbourhood of Hökarängen produced with Konsthall C.
Curated by Ulrika Flink.

The Listening Academy aims at fostering transdisciplinary discussions on the topic of listening which can positively contribute to a range of contexts and communities. In particular, this edition of the Academy brings together an international group of scholars, researchers and practitioners whose creative and critical expertise are supportive for diversifying what an act or art of listening may be and how it may enable thinking alongside and with the complexities of global experience.

“Nothing here does not hear you” is a site specific, sound installation created from research made into the space formerly known as the 1820 Settler’s Monument.

The 2021 edition of the Borås Art Biennial presents the work of over 20 Swedish and international artists. The city of Borås, founded by merchants, was once the textile hub of Sweden and has always been identified as a city of trade. The Viskan River that runs through the city bears witness to its industrial past. In more recent times, Borås has become a center for innovation, sustainability, and technology. Deep listening for longing tunes into past and present imaginings of the city—and beyond

Bringing together artists from around the world who are attuned to this singular moment in history, The Normal showcases international perspectives, including new ways of working with artists to produce works that respond to the imperatives of sustainability. Crucially, it looks to highlight how our laws, histories and communities are entangled with viruses, ecosystems and each other, foregrounding the role that art plays in envisaging different relationships to worlds that have yet to emerge.

“As lockdown momentarily silenced the cities and stopped traffic, people started to notice nature in different ways. In this conversation with artists James Webb and Tonya McMullan, we explore how their works entangle with birds and bees respectively, thinking about what it means to be aware of, to communicate with, think through, negotiate and live alongside other species.” Talbot Rice Gallery, Edimburgh
Zoom Webinar, Free admission and online booking

James Webb participates in Audiosphere. Sound Experimentation 1980-2020 with a new commissioned work, cur. Francisco López.
The exhibition “looks to cover an historical and cultural void in terms of the recognition, exhibition and analysis of a key part of the recent changes that have taken place in the artistic conception of sound creation.”

James Webb participates in freq_wave: 7 seas, a collaborative, online sound installation conceptualised and curated by Carl Michael von Hausswolff, co-curated by Alonso Vázquez, and supported and commissioned by the TBA21 Academy.
Like a sonic cadavre exquis, each freq_wave is formed from the work of 12 artists invited to compose audio pieces within separate, strict frequency bands. The pieces are made in isolation to one another and are brought together in the environment of an online mixing desk where the audience can perform the 12 compositions simultaneously. For this, the fourth iteration, all the audio has been created with, and in response to the conceptual and auditory dynamics of the Mid-Atlantic Ocean.
Participating artists: Christina Kubisch, Stephen O’Malley, Thierry Charollais, Felix Blume, James Webb, Christine Ödlund, Tim Story, Christopher Chaplin, Mike Harding, Schneider TM, Jacob Kirkegaard, and Kent Tankred.

James Webb is taking part in the outdoor, summer exhibition Konst i Ån, taking place in and around the Norrtälje river, cur. Helén Hedensjö (Norrtälje Konsthall).
One of the pieces is Untitled (duet with one singer missing) which takes Olivier Messiaen’s duet, “La mort du nombre,” and presents it with just one singer. The reduction of the original piece creates a situation where the soprano’s part is primary, and the reading of the song’s dialectical lyrics becomes altered due to the absence of those of the tenor.
The artwork is broadcast along the river, close to Lilla Brogatan, daily on the half hour from 12am to 6pm.
Norrtälje Ån, Sweden

James Webb is taking part in the collective exhibition Ernest Mancoba — An Artist and His Legacy, cur. Joanna Sandell
Södertälje Konsthall, Södertälje, Sweden