An exhibition of sound-based work featuring Jenna Burchell, Mira Calix, FAKA, Mitchell Gilbert, Quaid Heneke, Dani Kyengo, Jabu Nadia Newman, Sean O’Toole, Mia Thom, Kemang Wa Lehulere with Mandla Mlangeni, and James Webb.

Listening Room invites artists to contribute to an exhibition that reflects on the position and scope of audio in contemporary art. The responses present a miscellany of practices.

Bottom’s Revenge is a collection of Ancestral Gqom Gospel sounds by FAKA, a cultural movement established by Fela Gucci and Desire Marea.

A copyright algorithm becomes conscious and learns to speak, telling its story through snippets of music in Mitchell Gilbert’s This is the Story.

The president is missing and an object arrives in the middle of the city in Sean O’Toole’s narrated short fiction, The Object.

In untitled: friends, Jabu Nadia Newman invites listeners to eavesdrop into the personal audio exchanges overlayed against each other. These exchanges, cover a range of issues but overall speak to the importance and complexities of friendship. At times, the voices are playful and gentle, and occasionally, express anger, frustration and irritation, reminding us of all the emotions we’ve all experienced with friends.

Mindset is an original digital composition by Quaid Heneke in response to coloured and queer representations on digital platforms such as YouTube.

Heneke sonically confronts these stereotypes through performative research as Queezy by fusing electronic music soundscapes with voices of marginalised people.

The original installation 'Tswee-tswee no Coughing, aseblief' (working title) is an ongoing piece by Dani Kyengo comprised of deconstructed pieces of various sounds. In the original installation, each sound piece fulfils the role of an individual instrument, and when together forms a full score - the full "orchestra". With the purpose of exploring psychosocial relationships between noise and silence.

All that is buried finds water by Mia Thom is a composition of sampled hydroponic recordings made at the "Field of Springs", Oranjezicht; a historic site of the //ammi ssa water system.

Through Jenna Burchell’s work, The Sound of Place, we are introduced to the history of slate miners in Bethesda who gave a portion of their small wage every month to build Banghor University so that their children could have a better life than they did.

Kemang Wa Lehulere collaborated with composer and musician Mandla Mlangeni to produce the album Bird Song on the occasion of his 2017 Deutsche Bank Artist of the Year exhibition. The exhibition was the product of dialogue and interaction between the artist and the work of Gladys Mgudlandlu, Sophia Lehulere (the artist’s aunt who drew Wa Lehulere’s interest to Mgudlandlu’s work), architect Ilze Wolff and the poetry of Gladys Thomas.

In her piece, i desire no commendation, Mira Calix worked with visual artist Sarah Lucas to reconsider the character of Catherine Parr, sixth wife of Louis VIII, in response to her portrait, liturgies and letters.

In Telephone Voice, James Webb used a clairvoyant to contact Orson Welles, interviewing him and transcribing the resulting speech for a voice actor to perform. Conceptually, the deceased American auteur directs the clairvoyant and through him the actor, who in turn influences the listener. The title refers to a style of telephonic enunciation often used to convey not only clarity but also a sense of status.

Curators: Nkule Mabaso, Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose & Chloë Reid.