Two culturally fascinating, major art shows in Norwich, must not be missed.
Enlightening and educational, the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts' latest exhibitions leave you with plenty to think about.
Empowering Art: Indigenous Creativity and Activism from North America’s Northwest Coast
This show brings together contemporary and historical pieces from across the Northwest Coast of North America.
As you walk into the centre you are struck by a piece of art so out of place in a 21st-century gallery - a totem pole protruding from the basement gallery, through the gap in the first floor and reaching towards the ceiling.
The exhibition charts the community's history - through their ancient past pre-colonialism, through the destruction of oppression from the west, to a new generation of artists reclaiming the power of the present, taking back what was lost and “carv[ing] a new aspirational chapter in Haifa history”.
READ MORE: Exclusive look behind locked doors at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
For thousands of years, the vast region that stretches from Washington State in the United States, through the Canadian province of British Columbia and up to Alaska’s Yakutat Bay has been the Indigenous territory of many First Nations peoples.
The histories, cultures, and artistic traditions of this region - known as the Northwest Coast - have been shaped by natural and supernatural worlds and forged through exchanges with other Indigenous groups and more recent encounters with outsiders.
The show tells the story of a coastline with distinctive artistic and cultural traditions.
A spokeswoman for the Sainsbury Centre said: "The empowering art of the Northwest Coast peoples is a living testament to their timeless strength, power and vibrancy."
Empowering Art has been developed in close consultation with Indigenous artists and community leaders from across the Northwest Coast.
The show runs until July 30.
Julian Stair: Art, Death and the Afterlife
Situated in the Mezzanine Gallery, looking out to trees on one side and the gallery below on the other, Julian's Stair's army of large-scale pots is an awe-inspiring collection.
The "shock" of the pandemic was the catalyst for the potter's body of work which explores society's relationship to death and ritual.
Some of Stair's bigger pieces take around 300 hours to make and three months to dry, and it is this scale - with pieces up to two meters high - in which the exhibition holds its power.
The work – ranging from cinerary jars to monumental abstracted figurative forms – plays with the intimate relationship between the vessel and the human body.
Key benefactors of the centre, Robert and Lisa Sainsbury, gave Stair a loan 40 years ago to start up his studio.
He said: "I am showing my contemporary cinerary jars alongside their outstanding collection of artefacts.
"Contemporary culture often shies away from a discussion of death – a subject that provokes fear and disquiet – however I believe that material art, like music and poetry, can positively mediate our experience."
The show runs until September 17.
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