John Akomfrah

Sir John Akomfrah is a British artist and film-maker, born in Accra, Ghana in 1957, who came to Britain as a child. In 1982 he co-founded the Black Audio Film Collective, whose first film, Handsworth Songs (1986), looked at the riots in Birmingham the year before. His multi-screen film installations, such as The Unfinished Conversation, about Stuart Hall, and Vertigo Sea, weave archive footage, new film and music to think about migration, memory, colonialism and climate. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2024 and was knighted in 2023.