Research Centre
Art and Design Research Centre

Date
2013

New work for the Sainsbury Centre

Becky Shaw been selected to make new work for the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich in 2014, as part of MONUMENT, developed by Time and Place. The work is in its early stages, but currently focuses on traditions of Christmas tree giving as acts of reparation, hospitality, or commitment. 

Time and Place (TAP) is a collaboration between the Sainsbury Centre, Fabrica art gallery in Brighton and three institutions in France: the Museé des Beaux-Arts in Calais, the Communauté d’Agglomeration du Calais, and the FRAC Basse-Normandie in Caen. The project is funded by the EU as part of the Interreg initiative, designed to stimulate cross-border co-operation and explore shared culture and heritage. Over the next two and a half years the organisations will work together to run a contemporary art and education programme based around the themes of Changing Landscapes, concentrating on the special character of the coastal regions of the southern UK and northern France; and Aftermath, looking at the legacy of war and conflict.

In 2014, the exhibition MONUMENT will unite the Time and Place partner institutions

• The FRAC Basse Normandie, Caen
• Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich
• The communauté d’agglomération du Calaisis, Cap Calaisis
• Musée des beaux arts de Calais

In 2014 the exhibition MONUMENT will be dedicated to the commemorations on either side of the Channel of the hundredth anniversary of the First World War, as well as to the seventieth anniversary of the Normandy landings. However, rather than being literally devoted to the subject of the world wars, we aim to treat the theme very broadly, interrogating the subject in terms of all the legacies and ideas of war, all its vestiges, edifices, ruins, and relics, and equally in terms of veneration and rejection. 

The word Monument exists in parallel and in almost the same senses in English and French. In both languages, around the idea of monument and its commemoration are associations with history, art, and indeed real events and news. It may be celebrated in works of architecture, or sculpture dedicated to the commemoration of a personality or an event, or indeed, enshrined in a building remarkable for its beauty or its antiquity, in an installation, or in a more fragile or ephemeral medium such as film or drawing. Whether associated with a funerary or public context, concept unites the exhibitions on both sides of the Channel. It enables us to explore and call into question a common history, tormented and complex, from the Hundred Years War to the twentieth century. MONUMENT will be dedicated to a number of separate exhibitions organised by the partners. Each one will form part of the global project. A single catalogue will bring the entire project together.

Researchers involved

Dr Becky Shaw - Post Graduate Research Tutor in Art and Design

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