About

Following a joint acquisition with the National Museum of Wales in 2021, John Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea, will be exhibited at Towner in summer 2021. First shown at the Venice Biennale in 2015, this three-channel film installation is the first in a trilogy including Purple (2017) and Four Nocturnes (2019) that explore the complex, intertwined relationship between humanity’s destruction of the natural world and destruction of itself. 

A sensual, poetic and cohesive meditation on man’s relationship with the sea and exploration of its role in the history of slavery, migration, and conflict, Vertigo Sea comes to Towner with the context of the gallery’s location on the southern coastline of England, and the constantly changing boundary between land and sea.⁠ Acquired with support from Art Fund, the Derek Williams Trust, The Search Foundation through the Contemporary Art Society, and Towner Collection Development Fund.⁠