For over 15 years, Bailey has worked at the forefront of sonic exploration. Using sound in all its forms, Bailey opened up spaces of grief, loss, resistance and remembering – creating active and radical new models of community, co-production and connection.
Recorded during the artist’s first visit to Jamaica in 2025, in the exhibition’s newly commissioned work, 5C Jacques Road: Part One (2026), viewers travel with Bailey on her journey across the island towards the place where her mother’s family once lived. Unfolding in three parts, the footage, shot on an iPhone, is accompanied by a new composition featuring field recordings collected along the way.
'Bailey's soundtrack is hypnotic' The Wire, June 2026
The adjoining spaces of the exhibition played host to the two earlier works in the trilogy. Themes of family, history and connection also run through the second instalment, Untitled: Our Wedding (2022); a tender film of lingering shots of the photo album of Bailey’s parents’ wedding. These images are intertwined with lines of poetry by Remi Graves and a score by Bailey that re-versions the famous chord sequence from Richard Wagner’s 1850 work ‘Bridal Chorus’.
Version (2021), the trilogy’s first work, is comprised of compositions and recordings in which the artist reflects on her heritage through music and food – with each part accompanied by a text written by Taylor Le Melle. Above the screens hung 64 sculptures of Jamaica’s national fruit, the ackee –representing the years since Jamaica gained independence in 1962.
Written to accompany the exhibition, this File Note includes an essay written by Gail Lewis.
Ain Bailey (b. 1963, London) is a composer, artist and DJ. She facilitates workshops considering the role of sound in the formation of identity, and the exploration of memory and sound. In 2020 Bailey and Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski created a composition and print entitled Remember To Exhale for Studio Voltaire, London. Previous exhibitions include And We’ll Always Be A Disco In The Glow Of Love, Cubitt Gallery, London (2019); Version, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2021); Atlantic Railton which was part of the Listening To The City sound installation programme in the 2021 Serpentine Pavilion; Untitled: Our Wedding for the Black Melancholia exhibition at CCS Bard (2022), New York, USA and Trioesque for Bruckenmusik 27 in Cologne, Germany (2022). Bailey’s most recent commission was for FACT Liverpool’s Resolution research project, for which she created the installation Four (2024). She was the 2022-23 Cavendish Arts Science Fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge. Forthcoming in June 2026 is an audio work commission by Art On The Underground for Waterloo Station.
Dazed (round up), 31 March 2026
Sounds of the City, BBC (radio interview), 2 April 2026
mov.r (review), 10 April 2026
The Wire (review; print only), June 2026
Art shows to leave the house for in April 2026
Dirty consumption, joy as labour, 60’s queer life, and more in this month’s unmissable exhibitions
Ain Bailey and Camden Art Centre were shortlisted for the Freelands Award 2023.
