LITURGIES

Liturgies marks a significant shift in Christopher Webb's practice, expanding painting into sound, text, and performance. With the support of Arts Nova Scotia and the Canada Council for the Arts, developed in part through artist residencies in Canada and Italy, the project explored how repetition, ritual, and language shape our understanding of memory, place, and belief. Rather than treating painting as a finished object, Webb approached each work as one element within a larger composition where image, handwritten prose, and sound became inseparable.

Central to the project are two original Gregorian chant-inspired compositions written by the artist. Performed collaboratively with local musicians during residencies in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, and Barge, near Torino, Italy, the recordings emerged through an intentionally open process of experimentation and improvisation. The resulting sound works do not accompany the paintings; instead, they occupy the same conceptual space, asking viewers to experience painting as something that can be heard as well as seen.

Looking back, Liturgies represents the beginning of Webb's multidisciplinary practice. The project contains many of the ideas that continue to define his work today: the layering of text beneath painted surfaces, the use of sound as a carrier of memory, and the belief that meaning is constructed through the convergence of multiple forms rather than a single image alone.

Selected exhibition installation images

Selected media documentation of Torino, Italy residency