John Akomfrah Solo Show

For his debut at Lisson Gallery, John Akomfrah is making two new diptych video installations, shot in Greece and Barbados respectively. The former looks at Greece’s precarious economic position through the cinematic references or “the eyes” of one of the country’s greatest film-makers, Theo Angelopulous, to consider the eye more generally; while the latter approaches the current refugee crisis through the handwriting of the Caribbean writer George Lamming, layering contemporary events in Europe with a little known event from 1654, when Sephardic Jews, escaping the Inquisition in Catholic Brazil, fled to the island of Barbados. These will be shown together with other new and recent works including Tropikos (2016), a film that transforms the landscape of the Tamar Valley into a sixteenth-century English port of exploration on the African continent in order to reveal the deep-rooted and darker history of the river.

The Lisson Gallery exhibition will coincide with the first UK showing of Akomfrah’s three-screen video installation Vertigo Sea at the Arnolfini in Bristol (16 January – 10 April 2016), following its premiere as part of Okwui Enwezor’s exhibition “All the World’s Futures” at the Venice Biennale in May 2015. Together with Trevor Mathison, Akomfrah has been commissioned to create All That Is Solid (2015) for the British Art Show 8 (at Leeds Art Gallery until 10 January 2016, then touring to Edinburgh, Norwich and Southampton). Akomfrah has also been nominated for the prestigious Artes Mundi, the UK’s largest art prize, the winner of which will be announced in January 2017.