The selection panel for In Proximity have encouraged artists based in the eastern counties to submit new or recent work that sums up their relationship with their surroundings and how their understanding of place, objects, people and other life forms emerge in their work. Selectors were Sarah Lowndes - Independent Curator, Daniel and Clara Artist, Amanda Geitner - East Anglian Art Fund Director, based at the Castle Museum, and Lisa Newby, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, also at the Castle Museum.
Paul and I appreciated the trouble the selection panel went to in pulling this off. The remit for the show aligns closely with the values of our own exhibition programme. In fact many of the artists we have worked with during the last nine years are significant contributors to the show, particularly the sculptors and artists working in 3D with unconventional materials and ceramics. Their being included in this survey exhibition is validation for these artists who have frequently found their work dismissed as 'craft' by East Anglian museums and galleries, despite their work being displayed elsewhere in the country. It is encouraging to see evidence of this change of perception.
Carolyn Brookes-Davies admiring her own work, who showed with us last October along side painter and printmaker Peter Wylie
Foreground - steel bound Vessel and background - steel bound Razor Stack
'Turn Off Your Mind' diptych painting on gesso panels by Claire Cansick,
who we will be showing in May along side ceramic sculptor James Evans
'Trace' hand carved, bleached lime wood sculpture by Jack Wheeler
"Sister I, 2025" by Victoria Fenn, who will also be showing with us this year
Some noteable works clockwise from top left: Rollo Timothy George "Fire Extinguisher, 2024"; Mathew Bennington "There Lie They and Here Lie We Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree, 2020"; Matthew Richardson "Settlement, 2025"; James Gladwell "Two Vases on Top of Each Other, 2025"
from left to right "By Arrangement, 2025"; Tessa Newcomb "Latch, 2025" Keron Beattie.
from left to right: "The Problem Horse and Other Stories #30, 2022"; Julie Sleaford; "In the Hanging Garden, 2025" and "We Bleed together, 2025" Nessie Stonebridge.
"Vécu, 2024"; Telfer Stokes
In Proximity is a fundraising exhibition with a proportion of the sale price of each artwork going to support the activities of the East Anglian Art Fund (EAAF). The selection panel have made it a condition for participating artists to donate a percentage of the proceeds of their work, if sold during the show, to the EAAF. A worthy cause, although it is a little unusual. It happens at the Royal Academy for a limited number of exhibitions and the print gallery, where the artists are expected to support the workings of the academy as an institution. But the Castle Museum is not the RA. The purpose of an open call exhibition is to provide a kind of survey of visual art practitioners working at the moment within a given area. It acts as a kind of census of creative activity. Holding an exhibition like this should be something that happens every five-years or so. These kinds of events check the 'health' of artistic activity in a country, or in this case, a region. They tend to be held by a public sector gallery or contemporary art space that is capacious enough to encompass a wide cross section of what is going on.
Exhibitions like this are not conventionally seen as an opportunity to raise funds, to subsidise a membership organisation made up of patrons of the arts. But these are the times we live in. Perhaps even the well-heeled are finding things tough enough to rely on getting the artists in the exhibition to part-fund the activities one would expect during less straightened economic times, to be covered by the institution. The EAAF does receive public funding, yet it cannot receive what it needs to programme exhibitions like this, which is less than ideal.
More information visit the Norwich Castle Museum website
About the author
Paul Barratt
Paul Barratt started working in contemporary art galleries in 1989, having graduated in Fine Art from Goldmsith’s, London University. He initially worked at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, one of the contemporary art dealers, who dominated the London art market in the 80s and 90s. He was approached by the Lisson Gallery to be gallery manager for the influential art dealer Nicholas Logsdail. This was followed by a short period in New York at Gladstone Gallery, to work for visionary art dealer Barbara Gladstone, working with the artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney.
On his return to London, Paul secured a place on the postgraduate curatorial course at the Royal College of Art, to complete an MA. After graduation in 2001, he worked as an independent curator on several projects in Oslo, London, Brighton and Basel, before joining Paul Vater at his design agency Sugarfree in 2004. He has worked with Paul ever since.
