The artist record Call and Response brings together pieces created in connection with performances and exhibitions by Jimmy Robert, including a booklet wrapped around the record. Jimmy Roberts’ work utilises photography, movement, text and subtle architectural intervention to discreetly interrogate ideas of inclusion and exclusion, belonging and identity, intimacy and distance. Here, Roberts asks how performance work can continue to be shown outside of an exhibition context, whilst still maintaining the feeling of an event.
The record layers Robert’s ‘live’ breathing, spoken works and soundscapes, occasionally performed in collaboration with other artists and musicians. The title references a kind of call-and-response arrangement that is often used in the French West-Indian tradition of dancer and drummer in dialogue. This idea of dialogue continues through the design of the record. Words wrap the music in the form of a booklet wrapping the record. Hiding and revealing details of image text as you open the pages, and playing with alternating papers to create compositions. 'Call and Response’ brings together eleven sound pieces created in the context of Jimmy Robert's performances and exhibitions. They were produced in collaboration with sound artist and DJ Ain Bailey, choreographer Jane Ellison, artists Rosa Barba and Emma Hedditch, among others. The record is complemented by a booklet with an introduction by curator Nadja Quante and an essay by Mason Leaver-Yap. .
Jimmy Robert (born 1975 in Guadeloupe, France) produces works on paper, photographs, collages, sculptures, videos and artist books. His artistic practice explores the points of contact between body and material, as well as the representations and material conditions of bodies.