EASTinternational: Unpacking the Archive

EASTinternational: Unpacking the Archive

2 December 2023 – 3 February 2024 | East Gallery

Conceptualised and curated by Professor Lynda Morris, applications from thousands of artists were received with approximately 25-30 artists selected to exhibit each year by two invited ‘selectors’. EASTinternational supported the careers of many artists including Martin Creed, Kenny Hunter, Jeremy Deller, Tomoko Takahashi, Lucy McKenzie, Zarina Bhimji, and Hew Locke.

Norwich University of the Arts currently holds a wide range of materials relating to the EASTinternational exhibitions. This archive relates to over 700 contemporary artists, curators, and dealers. Materials include artists’ editions, exhibition catalogues, publications, conference and discourse texts, artistic and curatorial documents, correspondence, works on paper, audio-visual materials, digital and analogue documentation, and other electronic items.  Norwich University of the Arts is currently cataloguing and digitising the EASTinternational archive to acknowledge its significance and open the resource to students and researchers.

EASTinternational: Unpacking the Archive is the first in a series of exhibitions and research events aimed at reflecting on the legacies, networks, and impact of the EASTinternational exhibitions. The exhibition presents the archive as a living site of knowledge production, mapping the contents of the archive through a chronological timeline identifying the community of selectors, artists, curators, technicians, and collaborators who were involved in EASTinternational over two decades. This community and the many audiences who engaged with the exhibitions are invited to share their thoughts and experiences through an ‘open source’ archiving of memory and oral histories. In a process of live-research-response, over the course of the exhibition the University Collections and Archives Coordinator will select and share archive materials which offer an insight into the day-to-day workings of the exhibitions.

Rather than offering an authoritative account of EASTinternational, this exhibition poses questions: what do we do with archives, what potential do they offer and how can we reimagine the way we engage with them to link past, present, and future in new and innovative ways?

Curated by Candice Allison with Charlie Denning (University Collections and Archives Coordinator)

EASTdiscourses: Public talks programme

Curated by Jonathan P. Watts

EASTinternational: Staff Selects

2pm | Saturday 9 December 2023

EASTinternational: Staff Selects (opens in a new window)

Artist-centred methodologies

1pm | Saturday 13 January 2024

Artist-centred methodologies (opens in a new window)

How To Do Things With an Archive

2pm | Saturday 27 January 2024

How To Do Things With an Archive (opens in a new window)