Kadeem Oak is an artist-filmmaker exploring nature, ecology and the Black British experience. Using experimental storytelling and documentation methods he blends film, sound, and archival materials to explore themes of memory, land and belonging.
Kadeem Oak is an artist and filmmaker based in London. Oak’s practice is interested in nature, ecology and the ways in which we can articulate a shared history and sense of place in relation to the Black British experience; informed by his own Afro-Caribbean heritage as well as his upbringing in the historically industrial city of Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
Oak's practice is concerned with the vernacular and reconfiguration of artist’s moving image, making installations and sonic interrogations, his work embraces varied forms of storytelling and experimental documentation while drawing from archival materials, historical events and site specificity to think through and uncover themes such as, ownership, belonging, memory, land, industry and exploitation.
Kadeem Oak (b.1989) graduated from Goldsmiths College, London with a BA in Fine Art Practice. He is currently a resident artist at Somerset House Studios London. Oak's films have been shown and screened at, including but not limited to: Somerset House; Cubitt Gallery, ICA London, Birkbeck Institute of Moving Image, Spike Island, Glasgow CCA, Nottingham Contemporary and Fabrica Brighton. As a curator and programmer of artist’s film, Oak recently contributed to the Somerset House artist's film series Home Movies with his curated programme: Pressed Flowers of the Empire which reflects Oak’s ongoing research into ecology, migration and the Caribbean; focussing on the botanical garden as a form of living archive. In 2023, Oak curated the artist's moving image exhibition Abundance In Togetherness at Cubitt Gallery. Since 2024, he has co-curated the artist platform Décalé alongside collaborators Leila Arenou and co-founder Chooc Ly Tan, dedicated to experimental sound, art, performance, and moving image by underrepresented artistic voices.
Effra Creek! Effra Wash! Effra Splash!
HD video / 20:00 min / 2022
01:12 min excerpt
Effra Creek! Effra Wash! Effra Splash! reflects upon the River Effra, a lost tributary of the River Thames. The project examines the cultural and sonic ecology of the river's course as it runs from Norwood, through Brixton and Vauxhall; exploring Afro-Caribbean histories and themes of industry, community, landscape and memory.
The film is a continuation of Oak’s research into the Caribbean histories of Brixton and neighbouring areas as first explored in the 2016 film Brixton Lift, a social document of the now shut down Brixton Splash festival. This street party, a celebration of Jamaican Independence Day and Caribbean culture, took place along much of the route of the buried River Effra. After the council ended the Brixton Splash party in 2015, Oak began to contemplate the connections between the ecology of the river and the precarity of cultural occurrences which ebb and flow above ground. Effra Creek! Effra Wash! Effra Splash! finds parallels and relationships between time and erosion, and the disappearing and marginalised communities as part of a wider ecology of urban change.
The work brings together digital video, archival images, dub/reggae Space Echo interpolated field recordings, maps, etchings and varied forms of image-production.
Brixton Lift
HD Video / 15:00 min / 2018
03:54 min excerpt
Brixton Lift is driven by an interest in the social archive, everyday historical events and showcasing examples of celebration and commune within Black British culture. The work creates visual compositions that combine sound and painterly imagery, informed by structuralist approaches to filmmaking using a poetic visual language. The camera explores various social and physical spaces, focusing on Atlantic Road in Brixton, documenting the now shut-down Brixton Splash music festival; an annual street party, held from 2006 to 2015 in celebration of Jamaican Independence Day and Brixton’s Afro-Caribbean community and culture. The film highlights the precarity of gathering and corporeal behaviours, while considering the ecology of the street, urban landscapes and the marginalisation of the built environment, exploring the material and illustrative potential of 16mm film and filmmaking when used as a social document.