Where creativity meets connection
Now touring the UK, Soundings is an ambitious new three-screen film and sound installation with live dance, conceived in response to the intensifying global debates on deep sea mining. Coming to Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts on Fri 16 – Fri 23 May, as part of Brighton Festival, the work sees Emma Critchley explore how our perceptions and language about the ocean shape the way we govern this vast and mysterious space.
She has long engaged with the critical yet little-known issue of deep-sea mining. The deep seabed—a shared human responsibility—is essential for climate regulation and life support. Although mining hasn't begun, in 2023 a two-year roadmap was set to finalise a mining code for future operations. Soundings gathers diverse perspectives, offering a counter-position to those pushing for commercial seabed mining.
The exhibition centres around a three-screen film installation that creates an expansive portrait of the deep sea, set within the context of current commercial interests. From an intimate encounter between a dancer and a deep-sea creature to ancient stories about our innate connection to this space; from visceral journeys over the first-ever hand-drawn maps of abyssal plains to the voices of Pacific activists; this kaleidoscopic portrayal delves into our complex relationship with the deep ocean and the nuanced debates around mining the seafloor.
On Fri 16 - Sat 17 May, the exhibition will be accompanied by a live performance of a solo dance piece developed by the artist in collaboration with choreographer Siobhan Davies. The dancer responds with movement to the sea creatures on the screen, enacting a way of being which is attuned to nature’s needs. Rights of the Deep, a co-written open letter by Pacific activists, legal scholars, and marine scientists, calls for deep-ocean protection as part of the growing Rights of Nature movement.
Brighton also hosts a Walk To The Bottom Of The Sea participatory event, where the public will collectively walk 7 miles, symbolising the ocean’s deepest depth, with speakers sparking conversations at key points marking different ocean zones.
Soundings is supported by John Hansard Gallery, Tate St Ives and Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts with public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England. It is presented in cooperation with John Hansard Gallery, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Tate St Ives and Quay Arts. Soundings was also kindly supported by South East Dance.
Critchley uses water as a formal material property within varied media including film, photography, sound, installation and writing. Her work explores the underwater environment as a political, philosophical and environmental space.
Between 2016 and 2018 she made Common Heritage, a short film funded by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation about deep-sea mining for deep seabed minerals, which became the precursor to Soundings. In collaboration with artist Lee Berwick, in 2020 Critchley developed a large-scale public soundscape about underwater acoustic pollution, working with scientists across the globe, the British Antarctic Survey and the Californian Ocean Alliance. Installed in the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, London, the work launched the National Maritime Museum’s ‘Our Ocean, Our Planet season’.
In 2019, Critchley won the Earth Water Sky residency programme with Science Gallery Venice, where she spent a year working with the Ice Memory Project. The resulting multi-screen film installation Witness premiered in the Italian Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021. Her ongoing investigative project Soundings tours UK venues in 2025, taking audiences on a journey to the deep, through film, sound and dance, bringing to light the pressing issue of deep-sea mining during a pivotal year.
Emma Critchley presents Soundings at Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts on Fri 16 – Fri 23 May 2025, live performance on Fri 16 - Sat 17 May, as part of Brighton Festival.
www.attenboroughcentre.com/events/5379/brighton-festival-emma-critchley-soundings
Top image by Emma Douglas
Mark O'Donnell
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