Held on Zoom on 10 September, CAS Director Caroline Douglas and John Akomfrah discuss his upcoming show at Lisson Gallery, the events of 2020 including the BLM movement and the climate emergency, and the importance of museums to remain ethical above all else.
The CAS has acquired two important works by Akomfrah in recent years, Peripeteia (2012) for Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art in 2016 through the Collections Fund at Frieze and Untitled (2016) for Mead Gallery, University of Warwick Art Collection this year. The CAS also supported Towner Art Gallery and Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales in jointly acquiring Vertigo Sea (2015) in 2019.
John Akomfrah is an artist and filmmaker whose works are characterised by their investigations into memory, post-colonialism, temporality and aesthetics and often explores the experiences of migrant diasporas globally. He was a founding member of the influential Black Audio Film Collective, which started in London in 1982 alongside the artists David Lawson and Lina Gopaul, who he still collaborates with today.
Akomfrah (born 1957) lives and works in London. In 2019 his work was shown as part of the Ghana Pavilion at 58th Venice Biennale and he was awarded the Artes Mundi Prize in 2017. Recent solo exhibitions include including Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, USA (2020); Secession, Vienna, Austria (2020); BALTIC, Gateshead, UK (2019); ICA Boston, MA, USA (2019). He is represented by Lisson Gallery.