John Akomfrah is a hugely respected artist and filmmaker, whose works are characterised by their investigations into memory, post-colonialism, temporality and aesthetics and often explore the experience of the African diaspora in Europe and the USA. Akomfrah 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. Their first film, Handsworth Songs (1986) explored the events surrounding the 1985 riots in Birmingham and London through a charged combination of archive footage, still photos and newsreel. The film won several international prizes and established a multi-layered visual style that has become a recognisable motif of Akomfrah’s practice. Recent works include the three-screen installation The Unfinished Conversation (2012), a moving portrait of the cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s life and work; Peripeteia (2012), an imagined drama visualising the lives of individuals included in two 16th century portraits by Albrecht Dürer and Mnemosyne (2010) which exposes the experience of migrants in the UK, questioning the notion of Britain as a promised land by revealing the realities of economic hardship and casual racism.
Mnemosyne refers to the mother of the Nine Muses, the personification of memory in Greek mythology. Akomfrah’s tone poem is split into verses named after the daughters of Mnemosyne: Tragedy, History, Music, Sacred Song, Astronomy, Comedy, Erotic Love and Dance.
Created for the ‘Made in England’ project, Mnemosyne uses a vast array of archival material to hauntingly recast and retell the experiences of postwar immigrants – resuscitating the now familiar images of our multicultural and diasporic histories.
Centering on the West Midlands from 1960 - 1981 and interlaced with images of an unidentified frozen wasteland, contemporary ‘portraits’ of Brimingham, narrative and literary voices and a dub infused soundtrack Mnemosyne is an evocative bricolage which questions memory and suggests the possibility for endless re-interpretation of historical events.
Photo © Smoking Dogs Films; Courtesy Lisson Gallery.
Ackroyd & Harvey's multi-disciplinary work intersects art, activism, architecture, biology, ecology and history, and references memory and time, nature and culture.
Adam Chodzko explores the interactions and possibilities of human behaviour by investigating the space of consciousness between how we are and what we might be.
Adam is an international renowned artist whose large-scale narrative drawings and prints can be found in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon as well as many leading private collections including that of HRH The Prince of Wales.
Akeim Toussaint Buck is an interdisciplinary performer and creative, born in Jamaica and raised in England.
Aleema Gray is Community History Curator at the Museum of London and PhD researcher at Warwick University.
Alison Cooke is a ceramic artist. She works site responsively with clay dug from interventions such as mining, scientific research or construction.
Alison Moore's short fiction has been included in Best British Short Stories, Best British Horror and more.
Amina Atiq is a Yemeni- Scouse writer, a performance artist, facilitator and activist.
Amy Pennington makes work that uses humour to connect human experiences and socio-political issues.
Andrea Luka Zimmerman is a Jarman Award winning filmmaker and artist whose engaged practice calls for a profound re-imagining of the relationship between people, place and ecology.
Andrew’s work defies neat boundaries to include research, socially engaged arts practice, performance, evaluation, writing, theatre making and public health.
Andy Freeman has produced digital and visual artworks and interventions since the late 1990s.
Andy Merritt is one half of the duo Something & Son. They explore the social and environmental issues that define our time via everyday scenarios, criss-crossing the boundaries between the visual arts, architecture and design.
Ania Bas is an artist and writer. Through her practice she explores how narratives shape understanding, mythology and knowledge of places and people.
Anne Hardy is internationally recognised for her works which combine physical materials with light and sound to create immersive and sensual environments.
Antonio Roberts is an artist and curator based in Birmingham, UK, working primarily with video, code, and sound.
Arbonauts create bold site-specific performance, challenging the meeting point between theatre, dance and installation.
Ayesha Tan Jones (AKA YaYa Bones) has a spiritual practice that seeks to present an alternative, queer, optimistic dystopia, through ritual, meditating, music and movement.
Benedict Drew works across video, sculpture, music and their associated technologies.
Bernadette is a working class author, storyteller, artist and activist.
Bryony Gillard is an artist, curator and educator whos work attempts to create a space for genealogies of intersectional feminist practice that are elusive, messy and entangled in contemporary concerns.
Carol Donaldson is a writer and Ecologist, living in Medway. Her book On the Marshes is an engaging journey into the waterlands of the north Kent Marshes.
Caroline Bird is a poet with six collections of poetry published by Carcanet
Carolyn Downing is an award-winning sound designer working in a variety of fields.
Caryn Franklin MBE, former fashion editor and co-editor of i-D Magazine and prime-time BBC TV presenter throughout the eighties and nineties, is a multi-platform broadcaster, fashion and identity commentator and activist.
Chloe Aridjis is a Mexican writer based in London. She is a member of XR Writers Rebel, a group of writers who focus on addressing the climate emergency.
Chloe Cooper is a socially engaged writer and artist based at Bow Arts in Thamesmead.
Christopher Sacre is a deaf signer and has been a visual artist and art facilitator for over 20 years. He specialises in providing creative workshops/activities that are accessible to deaf people and their families, supporting other facilitators to improve the accessibility of their provision at galleries, museums, and other creative events.
Dirish is a London based yoga teacher, immersed in the world of holistic healing.
Dominic Snow, AKA Elephantman, is a sculptor and painter living and working in London, part of Bow Arts Open.
Dot Dash is a collaboration between writer James Wilkes and artist Lawrence Bradby.
.jpg)
Dr Vandana Shiva is an eco-activist and agro-ecologist who has been campaigning for over 40 years
Artists Trevor Mathison and Gary Stewart form Dubmorphology a London based research, production and performance group who make experimental sound and visual installations that examine the relationship between culture, technology and creativity.
Dzifa Benson is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work insects science, art, the body and ritual which she explores through poetry, theatre-making, performance, essays, and criticism.
Eelyn Lee is an award-winning artist and filmmaker with a socially engaged practice.
Elsa James' work intervenes in the overlapping discourses of race, gender, diaspora and belonging.
Working across diverse media ranging from performance and video work to written publications, Emily investigates breaks down and reimagines utopian futures.
Eric MacLennan has been making avant-garde performance work for over thirty years.
Esi Eshun is a London based multidisciplinary artist and independent researcher.
Artist developing projects at the intersection of design, feminisms, and free software.
Fiona MacDonald works with human and nonhuman beings as Feral Practice to create art projects and interdisciplinary events that develop ethical and imaginative connection across species boundaries.
For over two decades Fiddian has been fascinated by the creative application of digital technology in the physical domain.
Fiona Compton is a London based Saint Lucian photographer, artist, filmmaker and historian.
Gabriella Hirst works primarily with moving image, performance, and with the garden as a site of critique and care.
Gareth Evans is a London-based writer, editor, film and event producer and Whitechapel Gallery’s Adjunct Moving Image Curator.
Gideon Mendel’s intimate style of image-making and long-term commitment to socially engaged projects has earned international recognition.
Hafsah Aneela Bashir is a Manchester-based poet, playwright, performer and mother originally from East London.
Hamja Ahsan is an artist, writer, activist and curator. He is the author of the book Shy Radicals: Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert, now adapted into a film.
_-_website_square.png)
Born and bred in South London, Hannah is a filmmaker and writer currently based in Sydney, Australia.
Hannah Whittaker is a performance maker and installation artist, creating interactive installations, one on one encounters and digital performances.
"Walking, weathering, watching, experiencing. Recording, reflecting. And, when possible, reporting. Reworking. Revising. Walking again."
Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer.
A Spanish artist who places miniature sculptures in public places around the world as part of an ongoing series called Cement Eclipses.
appearing courtesy of artist Calum F Kerr who expresses ideas through performance, sculpture, film and sound.
Jack is a writer, director and deviser working principally in live performance, but also across a range of audio, visual, online and analogue media.
James Jordan Johnson is an artist working in performance and sculpture. He grounds his work and research in performative and material histories, myth-making, and cultural collective memory.
Jas Dhillon is a multimedia practitioner inspired by the people, script, language, symbolic objects...
Jasleen Kaur’s art is an ongoing exploration into the malleability of culture and the layering of social histories within the material and immaterial things that surround us.
Jay Griffiths is an award-winning author of more than six critically acclaimed books.
Jeannette Ehlers is a Copenhagen-based artist of Danish and Trinidadian descent whose practice takes shape experimentally across photography, video, installation, sculpture and performance.
Jo describers herself as "an award-winning, middle-aged, provincial, international artist".
John Walter is a London-based artist working across a diverse range of media including painting, performance, moving image, installation and curating.
2.jpg)
Jon Blackwood is a reader in contemporary art at Gray's School of Art, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.
Jonathan Wright makes sculpture, installations and drawings, he observes and subverts functional structures that support and service our everyday lives.
_copy_-_portrait_website_copy.jpg)
Katrina Palmer works with stories that are distributed across found sites, audio environments, printed matter and performance.
Kayo Chingonyi was born in Zambia in 1987, moving to the UK at the age of six. He is the author of two pamphlets, and a fellow of the Complete Works programme for diversity and quality in British Poetry.
Lalita Bailey is a multimedia artist that believes creativity is the most liberating tool we have.
Lata Upadhyaya is a British Indian visual artist and social commentator, who migrated to the UK in the late nineties.
.png)
Laura Blake joins our Crude Britannia discussion on climate and the estuary on Sat 22 May. She is Chair of the Thames Crossing Action Group, formed to protest against the proposed, new Lower Thames Crossing.
Laura Daly is a multi-award-winning artist who creates site-specific and site-related artworks that range significantly in scale.
Lazarus Tamana is an international activist, a defender of human rights, environmental and Indigenous issuses. He is currently the President of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) Nigeria
Leo Boix is a bilingual Latinx poet born in Argentina who lives and works in the UK.
Leonard Alf is a student environmentalist studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at King's College London.
Lisa has been documenting, recording, facilitating and making visual art, digital art and performance for just over a decade.
Liz Bylett is an artist, author who is passionate about promoting self-realisation and empowerment for all through art.
Lora Aziz is an interdisciplinary artist - visual anthropologist, herbalist and experimental calligrapher.
Lu Williams creates cross-disciplinary artworks, social practice, events and printer matter.
Lucia is a writer from Southend-on-Sea, living in the Netherlands. She is interested in ideas of heritage, memory, place and home.
Luke Branch is frontman and songwriter of the band Asylums and founder of Cool Thing Records.
Lydia Brockless is an artist working across sculpture, print, drawing, text, conversations and participation.
Maggie Harris is a poet, prose writer, and visual artist. Originally from Guyana, she lived in Wales before relocating to Thanet, Kent.
Marcus Coates work is an enquiry into the degrees to which we can understand, know and relate to others, including the non-human.
Marcus Orlandi's practice is heavily influenced by a mix of high and low brow cultures that range from the Theatre of the Absurd to professional wrestling.
Maria Amidu is a UK-based visual artist and writer, developing national and international site-specific and public realm projects.
Martha Pailing is a spoken word and performance artist hailing from Blackpool.
Mary Mattingly founded Swale, an edible landscape on a barge in New York City to circumvent public land laws that make it illegal to pick food on public land.
Maya Scarlette is a self taught designer, taking household items and upcycling them into wearable fashion.
