‘Not even a pipe dream’: John Akomfrah represents Britain at Venice Biennale

Founder of Black Audio Film Collective says he would have laughed if someone had said he’d someday be in the UK pavilion

Britain’s national pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the world’s largest and most prominent art event, begins with video of delicate Holbein drawings from the Tudor court being washed over by the eddies of a stream and ends with the death of a British-Nigerian man, David Oluwale, who drowned in a Yorkshire river after being beaten by local police in 1969.

Along the way, in filmmaker Sir John Akomfrah’s exhibition, comes a sumptuously told visual and auditory story of migration and colonialism, held together by the image of flowing water. It culminates in images of the arrival in Britain of the Windrush generation – those who migrated from the Caribbean to the UK in the years after the second world war, often to work in British public services.