i heard whispers at table rock, Sound Performance by Leo Robinson

“i heard whispers at table rock” is an audio performance by Leo Robinson created in response to the two Aubrey Williams paintings within the exhibition Lost in the Cracks: Aubrey Williams in the Collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje. “i heard whispers at table rock” continues Robinson’s attempts to conjure manifestations of the diasporic, fragmented inner world, summoning not only indigenous and ancestral spirits but the psychology of migration and non-belonging. The piece builds on Williams’ attempt to consolidate seemingly disparate influences, where Shostakovich’s monumental musical works of the western classical tradition sit alongside his lifelong infatuation with indigenous symbols of the americas, painting a dynamic and complex inner world in which these elements coexist. The work uses live tape manipulation of an infamous 1957 recording of Shostakovich’s 5th symphony as a backdrop. Through an improvised and evolving sound collage, samples are introduced from 20th Century ethnographic material, contemporary online ephemera, live percussion and Robinson’s own field recordings from the Caribbean.

Leo Robinson (b. 1994, Staffordshire) is a London-based multidisciplinary artist. His work explores new models of ritual and ceremony through sculptural installation, video, sound and diagrammatical works; speculating on how we might form new systems and symbols from an amalgamation of pop-cultural, mythological and theoretical sources. This work imagines topographies of psycho-space and, within them, modes of healing for descendents of migration, spiritual severance, and colonial violence. He has exhibited nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions include DREAM-BRIDGE-OMNIGLYPH, London Mithraeum Bloomberg Space, 2024; On Exactitude, Indigo+Madder, 2023; The Infinity Card, Chapter Arts Centre, 2022; Theories for Cosmic Joy, Tiwani Contemporary, 2019. Group exhibitions include Play Power, Sainsbury Centre, 2026; The Trembling Museum, Hunterian Art Gallery, 2023; To The Edge of Time, KU Leuven, 2021. He has undertaken residencies at G.A.S (Nigeria, 2023) and Hospitalfield (Scotland, 2025). In 2025, he was awarded the Art Foundation Futures Award for Visual Art, and commissioned for Artangel’s Earth Rising: Messages from the Pale Blue Dot. His music has been released with PRAH Recordings and performed live on BBC 6Music.