MADE IN BRITAIN

With 62 screens and 31 hours of footage, John Akomfrah's 'Listening All Night to the Rain' is a visual feast exploring the UK experience, writes Mark Hudson at the Venice Biennale

The prevailing response to much contemporary art may be “so what?”, but you can hardly accuse John Akomfrah of failing to provide weighty content. In a Venice Biennale dominated by superficially striking but essentially shallow displays – with a focus on indigenous cultures that feels a little too much like “this year’s thing” – the veteran multimedia artist’s British pavilion stands out for the sheer density and richness of the imagery deployed over eight meaty film installations.

Representing Britain in the world’s greatest art festival – what has been described as the “Olympics of art” – at a time when the country is more polarised ever, the notion of “British identity” more contested than at any time in living memory, Akomfrah isn’t afraid to bring together the “best” and the “worst” of what our nation has to offer. One particularly resonant moment sets the tone: we see a sign bearing the words, “No Coloured, No Dogs, No Irish” dumped in a bubbling stream in a heartbreakingly beautiful Scottish landscape. A phrase embodying small-minded xenophobia, of the kind that confronted Afro-Caribbean immigrants looking for lodgings in 1950s London, is juxtaposed with the kind of majestic setting that inspired radical British artists of the order of Turner and Wordsworth.