ICA is closed from the 30 May – 3 June inclusive.
Helen Cammock, There’s a Hole in the Sky Part I, 2016, 19 min 6 sec.
Book tickets
Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985 – 2025
Helen Cammock’s two-part video work There’s a Hole in the Sky (2016) explores the entangled legacies of colonialism, migration, and appropriation through a lyrical blend of poetry, song, and image.
Part I moves between the sugarcane plantations of Barbados and a former factory site, weaving fragments of personal memory, historical narrative, and literary quotation. The narration – drawing on the voices of Derek Walcott, Jamaica Kincaid, Maya Angelou, and others – shifts fluidly between confessional and collective, complicating the singular ‘I’ with a multiplicity of perspectives.
Part II continues across the Atlantic to East London, where footage of the Tate & Lyle sugar factory is overlaid with imagined dialogue and extended reflection. A climactic sequence from Stormy Weather (1943), featuring the Nicholas Brothers, becomes a lens through which Cammock examines Black performance, innovation, and the ways in which dominant narratives obscure their origins.
The screening is accompanied by a live performance in which Cammock extends the film’s concerns through spoken word and song, deepening the emotional and political resonance of the work.
Click here to explore the full exhibition and event programme.
Helen Cammock’s two-part video work There’s a Hole in the Sky (2016) explores the entangled legacies of colonialism, migration, and appropriation through a lyrical blend of poetry, song, and image.
Part I moves between the sugarcane plantations of Barbados and a former factory site, weaving fragments of personal memory, historical narrative, and literary quotation. The narration – drawing on the voices of Derek Walcott, Jamaica Kincaid, Maya Angelou, and others – shifts fluidly between confessional and collective, complicating the singular ‘I’ with a multiplicity of perspectives.
Part II continues across the Atlantic to East London, where footage of the Tate & Lyle sugar factory is overlaid with imagined dialogue and extended reflection. A climactic sequence from Stormy Weather (1943), featuring the Nicholas Brothers, becomes a lens through which Cammock examines Black performance, innovation, and the ways in which dominant narratives obscure their origins.
The screening is accompanied by a live performance in which Cammock extends the film’s concerns through spoken word and song, deepening the emotional and political resonance of the work.
Click here to explore the full exhibition and event programme.
Bio
Helen Cammock lives and works in North Wales and London. Her interdisciplinary practice spans film, photography, print, text, song and performance, and engages with historical and contemporary narratives around Blackness, womanhood, oppression and resistance, wealth and power, poverty and vulnerability. Moving fluidly across time and geography, her works often layer multiple voices and perspectives to explore the cyclical nature of history through poetic, visual and aural assemblage. She was awarded the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2017 and was a joint recipient of the Turner Prize in 2019.
Cammock has exhibited and performed internationally, with recent solo shows including Bass Notes and SiteLines, Amant, Brooklyn (2023); I Will Keep My Soul, Art + Practice, Los Angeles, and UNO Gallery, New Orleans (2023); They Call it Idlewild, Oakville Galleries, Ontario (2023); Concrete Feathers and Porcelain Tacks, The Photographer’s Gallery, London (2021); and Che Si Può Fare, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2019). Her recent group exhibitions include Soft Impressions, Dundee Contemporary Arts (2024); Breathing, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2022); and Radio Ballads, Serpentine Galleries, London (2022). Upcoming group shows include Connecting Thin Black Lines 1985–2025 at the ICA, London (2025). Her forthcoming solo show at Kate MacGarry will open in September 2025. She is represented by Kate MacGarry, London.
Book tickets
07:00 pm
Wed, 16 Jul 2025
Cinema 1
£15 full price / £13 concession
Ticket information
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Cinema 1
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