The Journey, 2022
Duration: 14:45 mins, loop
The Journey is a spatial sound work that moves through threshold, transition, and psychological passage, inspired by an eerie, vivid two-hour journey from Accra to Elmina Castle on Ghana’s coast in 2005. Once one of the most strategic sites within the triangular trade routes of the British transatlantic slave trade, Elmina Castle houses the ‘Door of No Return’—the portal through which enslaved Africans were forced onto ships bound for the Atlantic crossing known as the Middle Passage. Unfolding as a state of suspension—neither arrival nor departure—the work situates the listener within an unresolved in-between. Here, the corridor becomes a site of reflection and disorientation, where what is heard slips between presence and absence, and where endings remain perpetually deferred. In this way, The Journey prepares audiences for The Black Interior (2022), encountered in the adjoining gallery.
Commissioned by Focal Point Gallery as part of the solo exhibition Othered in a region that has been historically Othered, 2022. Funded by Arts Council England, Focal Point Gallery and Southend-on-Sea City Council.
Credits: Designed by Trevor Mathison with Elsa James. Audio installation by KSO Digital. Image: Paul Bates and Gabrielle Milanese
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