James Webb (b. 1975, Kimberley, South Africa) has been working on both large-scale installations in galleries and museums as well as unannounced interventions in public spaces since 2001. His work explores the nature of belief and dynamics of communication in our contemporary world, often using exoticism, displacement and humour to achieve these aims. He has participated in exhibitions including the 3rd Marrakech Biennale, the 2009 Melbourne International Arts Festival and the 9th Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, and is the subject of a survey show at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in July 2012.

Notable recent projects include “Scream,” wherein the artist recorded museum staff of Spain’s Reina Sofia museum screaming at Picasso’s Guernica, “The Black Passage,” a recording of the empty elevator cage descending the world’s deepest goldmine, and “There’s No Place Called Home” an on going, world-wide intervention using incongruous foreign birdcalls broadcast out of speakers concealed in local trees, for example the calls of South African summer birds installed in Japanese trees during midwinter.