John Akomfrah, British Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale

About

This year’s pavilion by British artist John Akomfrah RA will be a multi-layered exhibition which encourages visitors to experience the British Pavilion’s 19th century neoclassical building in a new way. 

Through his work, Listening All Night To The Rain, Akomfrah will continue to explore the themes that have featured throughout his work of the past four decades and his investigation of issues of contemporary life, such as memory, migration, racial injustice and climate change -  with a renewed focus on the act of listening and the sonic.

Visitors can expect an interlocking, multi-media installation that builds as they journey through the pavilion space. 

Akomfrah, who was recently honoured with a knighthood in the 2023 UK Honours list, is known for his art films and multi-screen video installations, which explore major issues including racial injustice, colonial legacies, diasporic identities, migration and climate change.

The London-based artist initially came to prominence in the early 1980s as part of the Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC), a group of seven artists founded in 1982. The BAFC's first film was Handsworth Songs (1986) which explored the events around the 1985 riots in Birmingham and London. In recent years, his multichannel video works have evolved into ambitious, multi-screen installations shown in galleries and museums worldwide. In 2017, he won the Artes Mundi prize, the UK’s biggest award for international art. He has previously participated in La Biennale di Venezia with his piece Four Nocturnes, commissioned for the inaugural Ghana Pavilion in 2019.