Exhibitions
East International, Norwich Gallery, Norwich
1997
East International, Norwich Gallery, Norwich
1997
East International, Norwich Gallery, Norwich 1997
Selecter: Nicholas Logsdail and Tacita Dean
Selecter: Nicholas Logsdail and Tacita Dean
10 Olga Adelantado Alvarez
12 Phyllida Barlow
14 Margaret Barron
16 David Batchelor
18 Liesbeth Bik & Jos van der Pol
20 Anneke De Boer
22 Cornford & Cross
24 Judith Dean
26 Laura Emsley
18 Peter Fillingham
28 Anthony Freestone
30 Simon Granger
32 Christoph Hafner & Miquel Valdasquin
34 Sa’ ad Hirri
36 Philippine Hoegen
38 Noriko Honda
40 Mark Hosking
42 Stephen Hughes
44 Mike Kay
46 Andrea Knobloch
48 Masakatsu Kondo
50 Alex Landrum
52 Willie McKeown
54 Alexander & Susan Maris
56 Joanne Moar
58 Obuabang
60 Louise Short
62 Tomoko Takahashi
64 Richard Torchia
66 Gavin Wade
68 Jamie Wagg
INTRODUCTION Lynda Morris
Democracy works. EAST is sustained by the artists who enter it. It is an open
exhibition and there are no rules about an artist’s age, status and residence or any
restrictions on the medium they use. In seven years it has become the largest inter-
national exhibition of contemporary art held annually in Britain.
The EAST Steering Committee chooses one selector. We have invited selectors
with the breadth that comes from working consistently since the 1960s. They are
major figures but they have to have remained independent enough to accept our
invitation to work with an organisation that is outside the establishment. The invited
selector then decides who they want to work with as a partner in the selection. We
are concerned about a clear focus for each exhibition so that artists can decide if it is
relevant to their work.
EAST was the first open show to make a virtue of slides and to admit that they
were the only sensible way to organise an open submission. Slides also meant we
could make an open show that included sculpture and installation as well as film,
photography, craft or theory which were excluded at that time from other open
exhibitions.
Working with slides also meant we could develop an international application and
overcome the insularity imposed by geography on British artists. East Anglia has a
tradition of gazing longingly across the North Sea. The only English person painted
by Rembrandt was a Norwich vicar. Further back there was a thriving school of
painting influenced by wool trade links with Ghent and Florence. We initially
concentrated on an imaginary geographic line from Glasgow through Norwich to
Amsterdam and Düsseldorf as a counter balance to London. We continued this idea
of developing links with cities rather than with the complex geography of countries.
We now have regular contacts with groups of artists in Basel, Vienna, Turin,
Barcelona, Brussels, Paris, Sydney and Vancouver.
Selecting EAST in 1994, Rudi Fuchs said he appreciated the opportunity it gave
him to look at everything, without any preliminary selection. A major museum in a
big city, like the Stedelijk in Amsterdam, could not organise an exhibition in this
way. It would be swamped by applications. It is only a provincial venue like Norwich
that can handle it.