Venice Biennale Fellow Amy Townsend-Lowcock reflects on John Akomfrah’s British Council Commission 'Listening All Night To The Rain'
We were delighted to be part of the British Council’s 2024 Venice Biennale Fellowship programme, and to offer an opportunity for two artists from the North West to each spend a month in Venice during the world’s most important art and architecture biennale.
The Fellowships Programme is a key part of the British Council’s presence in Venice, supporting the exhibition programme as well as being a platform for the development of artists and creatives. The Fellowship offers a unique opportunity for early career artists to represent the UK on an international level whilst broadening their perspective, making connections and developing their creative practice.
Our 2024 Venice Fellows were multimedia artist and reasercher Amy Townsend-Lowcock and multidisciplinary artist Isabella So.
For Lowry blog, Amy Townsend-Lowcock has written about her time in Venice focusing specifically on artist and filmmaker John Akomfrah’s British Council Commission 'Listening All Night To The Rain' for the British Pavilion.
In September 2024, I spent a month in Venice as a British Council Venice Biennale Fellow. I was nominated for the fellowship by Lowry, and I set off to Italy - in a sense - to represent them at the world-famous exhibition.
If you don’t know much about the Venice Biennale – as I didn’t before I learned of this opportunity – it’s an international art and architecture exhibition that’s been running since 1895. Lots of countries host their own exhibitions each year, and some of them do so inside their own galleries (which are called pavilions).
Usually, each country exhibits the work of just one artist, and this was the case for the British Pavilion last year. The selected artist was none other than John Akomfrah RA, an icon in the Black British experimental documentary filmmaking movement.
When I found out that John Akomfrah had been selected to take over the ‘English country house’ style building of the British Pavilion, I was really excited. He is my favourite artist, and I admire how he creates work that challenges widespread ideas that have roots in colonial ideology. On paper, he was the perfect pick for the festival-wide theme ‘Foreigners Everywhere’. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t disappointed by the exhibition he produced.
‘Listening All Night to the Rain’, was a broad and ambitious project about diaspora, post-colonialism, and ecology. It challenged its visitors to interrogate their understanding of British history and to consider the violence of colonialism on all living creatures (including, the environment). Throughout the exhibition, there was glorious archival imagery of the Windrush generation, Caribbean and Indian soldiers in the British Army during WW2, and a treasured audio archive of revolutionary Black voices from across the globe, such as Angela Davis. There were also tableaus that had been choreographed by Akomfrah; striking shots of individuals (largely, people of colour), lying on their backs, surrounded by objects from their past and their ancestors’ pasts. Awe-inspiring landscape shots of the Scottish and Yorkshire countryside also appeared on the collage of screens inside the pavilion walls, bringing all the archive on display back to British soil. Even footage from abroad – relating to the Mau Mau uprisings in Kenya or Congo’s battle for independence from Belgian colonial rule – are contrasted with British landscapes, highlighting how Britishness and colonialism are bound together.
For Britons from diasporic backgrounds, the British Pavilion became a place to feel seen – at least, it did for me. Exploring the cavernous gallery, with its dark purple and burgundy walls, I thought about my grandparents and the sacrifices they made to leave Jamaica and build a life in England. Confronted by the archive relating to David Oluwale’s death at the hands of Yorkshire police officers, I thought about Cousin Winston – my Grandad’s cousin – and how he was chased through the streets by Teddy Boys and police. Photos of Windrush migrants as Transport for London employees reminded me of my Grandparents’ friend, George, a fellow Jamaican who used to park his 153 bus outside their housing estate and come up for tea. The atmosphere inside the gallery was, undoubtedly, melancholic but I also felt a bit relieved as I walked around. I was comforted by the fact Black Britons were being recognised, being remembered. They were being spotlighted on the same stage as Sir JE Millais’s Pre-Raphaelite painting, Ophelia! It was like Akomfrah was turning history inside out and showing us that history is selective memory. History is about who we remember and who we forget.
As I sat amongst the dark edges of the rooms with my ‘ASK ME’ badge on during shifts, I had a few people look to me for answers as to what it all meant. “A quick overview” was the common request. But it is so hard to give a quick overview of ‘Listening All Night to the Rain’ and everything it meant to me. When my cohort first arrived at the British Pavilion, we were given a tour of the exhibition by the previous group. I remember one of them saying that ‘Listening All Night to the Rain’ was designed in a way that meant each person walking through could pick up on at least one strand of Akomfrah’s messaging. In other words, as an audience member, you could take what you wanted from it. I saw countless people deeply connect to the references and take a lot of meaning from the work, and a noisy few take little.
By the end of the fellowship, when people asked me what ‘Listening All Night to the Rain’ was all about, I embraced the project’s ambiguity. I would say that it was about how the public has a say in how British history is understood by future generations. We have a say in who gets forgotten, and we can resist those who wish to erase colonial history and Black Britons of the past from our national memory by listening to the echoes they left behind.
Experiencing the Venice Biennale as a British Council fellow really influenced my practice and expanded the way I think about art. Exploring exhibitions across the city, I found that I gravitated to artworks that were co-created by different communities, challenged historical narratives, or were participatory in some way. I would like to bring these elements into my creative research project (for the fellowship), and experiment with how they can be used to challenge racial stereotypes. I also love how broad and layered ‘Listening All Night to the Rain’ was! It has inspired me to be more ambitious in my work going forward and to be more confident in my ideas. Many thanks to John Akomfrah, the British Council, Lowry and everyone who had a role in the exhibition for this amazing experience!