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The Future Is Behind Us
Exhibition 17 December 2022–19 April 2023
Installation photograph from The Future Is Behind Us exhibition in A4’s Gallery. In the middle, James Webb’s sound installation ‘Prayer’ features an long red carpet with upturned audio speakers laid out in a geometric pattern.
Artwork: James Webb, Prayer (2000–). 12 speakers, carpet. Dimensions variable. Private collection.
Title The Future Is Behind Us Dates 17 December 2022–19 April 2023 Location Gallery Tagline An exhibition about time, tense and tempo.
Curator Josh Ginsburg
Credits

Artists:
Kader Attia
Félix González-Torres
Mitchell Gilbert Messina
Santu Mofokeng
Kyle Morland
Asemahle Ntlonti
Cornelia Parker
Jo Ractliffe
Gian Maria Tosatti
Naama Tsabar
Kemang Wa Lehulere
James Webb
Ian Wilson

"What you see in front of you, is the past. You cannot see the future," Tarik Yildirim said one evening over dinner. "The future is behind us." The exhibition gathers artworks to think about time: vertical time of ideas passing from one generation to the next; from one place to another; time at a human scale of a single life lived; deep time of soil and season; time as sound; time as pause; time that turns space into place.

The Future Is Behind Us marks ten cities and 22 years of James Webb's Prayer (2000–). This is the first time that the prayers from all ten cities will be played together.

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