UK Exhibitions Recast the Sea as a Mirror for Human Relations and Politics

Recent group exhibitions in the UK, including Anna Boghiguian's 'The Sunken Boat' at Turner Contemporary in Margate and 'Sea Inside' at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich, reframe the ocean from a mythologized entity into a lens for contemporary political and social issues. Boghiguian's show, running at the Margate gallery, features installations such as 'The Salt Traders' (2015) and 'The Sunken Boat' (2025), using salt, painted sails, and cutout figures of world leaders to critique colonial narratives, migration, and power. The exhibition's title references a slave ship that never sank, but the artist uses metaphor to address human and ecological crisis. Meanwhile, 'Sea Inside', curated by Pandora Syperek and Sarah Wade, includes works by Harun Morrison, Gabriella Hirst, Heidi Bucher, Marcus Coates, Evan Ifekoya, and Laure Prouvost, exploring intimate oceanic spaces and identity politics. Bucher's 1972 video 'Bodyshells' and Shuvinai Ashoona's drawing 'Composition (At the Dentist)' (2022) are highlighted. The exhibitions respond to the politicisation of the sea in UK discourse, including anti-immigrant rhetoric from Reform UK and Prime Minister Keir Starmer's 'island of strangers' phrase. The shows propose learning to live with the unknown, both oceanic and human.