The UK premiere of Listening All Night to the Rain, by internationally acclaimed artist and filmmaker Sir John Akomfrah, opens to the public this Saturday, 24 May, at the National Museum Cardiff.
This marks the first stop in the UK tour, following the work’s debut at the British Pavilion during the 2024 Venice Biennale, where it was originally commissioned by the British Council.
Knighted in 2023 for services to the arts, Akomfrah is celebrated for his genre-defying art films and multi-screen video installations that explore complex global themes, including racial injustice, colonial histories, migration, diasporic identity, and the climate crisis. He rose to prominence in the early 1980s as a founding member of the Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC), and later won the Artes Mundi Prize in Cardiff in 2017.
Ahead of the opening, Akomfrah spoke about the exhibition and his long-standing connection to Wales on the British Council Wales’ new international arts podcast series, Breaking Boundaries.
He said: “My relationship with Wales - and Cardiff in particular - goes back to the ‘80s. I was part of what used to be called the Association of Workshops, which were film workshops scattered across the country. I came to Cardiff to meet at Chapter Arts in the ’80s, and again into the ’90s. So, to be able to win the Artes Mundi prize in Cardiff was a special delight for me. And a lot of the works that you will see in this exhibition were made in Wales. It’s a country and a city I feel a strong affinity with.”
Listening All Night to the Rain is inspired by an 11th-century poem by the Chinese poet Su Dongpo.
John explained: “It’s a poem about fractured time - time lived on different planes, experienced in different moments. Essentially, it’s a poem about dreaming and dreamwork. The work that’s coming to Cardiff is a series of interconnected pieces on dreamwork that bring together a range of narratives, moments, and events. From the Vietnam War, to the fishing crisis in England in the 1970s, to the women’s movement in England and across the global South in the 1960s and ’70s, to migration to this country and to Wales.
“But it all works in the way dreams are supposed to: things are fractured, interconnected - impossible moments found in everyday situations - linked together in a kind of dreamlike way, both ethically and aesthetically.”
Originally conceived with the unique architecture of the British Pavilion in mind, the exhibition is designed to unfold across interconnected rooms - each exploring distinct yet overlapping themes.
He said: “I initially started to try and think about how we could have a piece in each room. And of course, as it went on, the rooms themselves started to suggest connections between these projects. Each room has a key subject matter, if you like - the sea in one, migration to Britain in the other, Vietnam in one, childhood in another. But all of them have overlaps. All of them share certain images. They share certain stories and certain characters.”
“The thing is to imagine... to be able to go into a room and have this weird sense of déjà vu, you know that you’ve somehow encountered something before, but not quite in the same form.”
Akomfrah’s distinctive approach aims to reframe the everyday and the uncanny, compelling viewers to question what they see.
He said: “It’s not every day that you see someone standing in five feet of water, that’s not usual, but the two things themselves are not unusual... Somehow bringing them together kind of forces me, initially, to think, what is going on here? Where am I? And I think it’s that question that you want people to be able to ask.
“That great question of where am I leads to all the other questions, you know, why are we here? What is the point of this? What is the meaning of this work? All of those questions are ones that I think artworks grapple with.”
Listening All Night to the Rain runs at the National Museum of Cardiff until 7 September 2025. Tickets are free to book and are available from: https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/12493/John-Akomfrahs-Listening-All-Night-to-the-Rain/
The UK tour is supported by the Art Fund and will see the installation head to Dundee Contemporary Arts in December 2026.
Listen to Sir John Akomfrah discuss the exhibition on the British Council Breaking Boundaries podcast, available now: https://wales.britishcouncil.org/en/programmes/arts/breaking-boundaries-returns-new-four-part-podcast-series-2025