Thick Seams, Hungate Medieval Church, Norwich, 18 July - 16 August

Thick Seams is a two-person show of new artworks by Freya Gabie and Alida Kuzemczak-Sayer at Hungate Medieval Art, Norwich. 

A series of tactile sculptures and interventions will explore the medieval former church of St Peter Hungate as a site of seams – layers, edges, patches and intersections – but also as a vessel, where manifold stories and sediments are held together. The work will attempt to map this archaeology through an excavation of the embedded pasts and speculative futures of the building, incorporating references to the wider material heritage of the region, such as shoe-making, weaving and monumental brass-rubbing.

Private View Thursday 16 July 6-8pm.

Thick Seams was the recipient of a ncas Small Grants Award in 2025. For more information on Small Grants click here

Lynn Chadwick at Houghton Hall until 4 October 2026

Houghton Hall are presenting a major exhibition of sculpture by the celebrated post-war British artist Lynn Chadwick CBE (1914–2003). Spanning four decades of the artist’s career, from the 1950s to the 1990s, this new presentation showcases previously unseen and rarely exhibited works alongside his best-known sculptures across the house and grounds of Houghton Hall. It forms the largest exhibition of Chadwick’s work in the UK in more than two decades, following the artist’s death and the retrospective at Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries in 2003.

Curated by Pangolin London, the exhibition presents 30 works across multiple exterior and interior sites at Houghton Hall, including early works, a powerful group of dynamic beasts, kinetic sculptures, and a selection of Chadwick’s best-known paired figures (‘couples’), all set in dialogue with the Neo-Palladian architecture and extensive parklands of Houghton Hall.

About the Artist: Chadwick came to sculpture through unconventional means, initially training and working as an architectural draughtsman before turning to mobile constructions for trade fairs. The success of these early mobiles and free-standing sculptures, two of which were shown at the Festival of Britain in London in 1951, encouraged him to pursue sculpture full time.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Chadwick’s practice was rooted in construction rather than modelling. Working primarily in bronze, he moved from kinetic mobiles in the late 1940s to the iconic angular figures — often paired and drawn from human and animal forms — from the 1950s onwards. He began by welding an iron armature, or ‘space frame’, which he then filled with Stolit, a man-made stone composed of gypsum and iron filings, building up the surface into a solid form.

Starting from abstraction and gradually giving his figures a strong sense of life and movement, Chadwick’s process reversed traditional sculptural methods. The result is a body of work marked by tension, attitude, and rich surface textures.

Chadwick came to international prominence in 1952, when he was included in the British Council’s New Aspects of British Sculpture exhibition at the XXVI Venice Biennale. In 1956, he returned to the British Pavilion, where he won the International Prize for Sculpture, beating Alberto Giacometti. He remains the youngest sculptor ever to receive the award.

​Chadwick went on to secure an international reputation, with works in many of the great public collections of Europe, North and South America, and Japan. Many honours and awards also followed, including a CBE in 1964 and election as a Royal Academician in 2001.

Seventy years on, this anniversary offers a timely moment to revisit Chadwick’s pivotal role in the history of post-war British sculpture.

The Lynn Chadwick exhibition runs until 4 October.

Text courtesy of Houghton Hall

Photographs Selwyn Taylor

Local Yokel, Saxmundum: 13 June to 22 August 2026

Curated by Clare Palmier, Director, The Art Station, Local Yokel, brings together artists and artists’ work that emanates from the local, ordinary and everyday and in its presence and execution offers work that has universal meaning and creates far-reaching resonances. 

The works are made using a huge range of practices and approaches: video, painting, casting in sand, plaster and bronze, assemblage, performance, ceramics, sculpting and weaving. 

The exhibition is located at The Art Station buildings:

• The Old Bank, 24 High Street

• The Telephone Exchange, 48 High Street

• The Art Station riverside garden – behind 24 High Street

and runs Wednesday 17 and Saturday 20 June and then by appointment until 15 August.

What is the Meaning of Life? at The Sainsbury Centre, 16 May - 4 October 2026

The Sainsbury Centre continues its innovative series of investigative exhibitions engaging with fundamental questions of life with two new seasons.

What is the meaning of Life? launching in May delves into the fundamental questions of human existence, from rule-making, to time and play and How do We Find Love? opening in November, explores the profound complexities of human relationships, desire, and intimacy.

For further information click here

The Sainsbury' Centre’s new Universal Ticket allows access to the entire gallery. This ticket operates on a ‘Pay If and What You Can’ basis. Upon arrival, please go to Gallery Reception. No pre-booking necessary.

Seven Decades of Contemporary Art: Norfolk Contemporary Art Society at Norwich Castle, 28 March 2026 - 28 February 2027

This exhibition celebrates the 70th anniversary of Norfolk Contemporary Art Society (ncas). Since its founding in 1956, ncas has supported the Castle to present work by innovative contemporary artists including Eduardo Paolozzi, Colin Self, Bridget Riley and Roger Ackling. Their work features in this display of more than thirty of the artworks ncas members have helped to collect over the past seven decades.

Derek Morris, Five Windows with Sky, 2005, stainless steel. Purchased with the support of an anonymous donor, The Art Fund and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation © The Estate of Derek Morris.

Recently supported acquisitions include Florence Peake's performance-based figurative paintings and photographic work by Daniel & Clara, which explores imagined narratives in a country estate. Work from Wall Existing, a multi-layered photographic survey of Norwich's medieval city walls by Robert Filby and Glen Jamieson is also exhibited.

These new additions to the collection are shown with highlights from the early decades of ncas' activity including Landscape with Farm Buildings (1954) by L.S. Lowry, a purchase which inspired the formation of ncas; and Man entering a Boiler House (c.1957) by Prunella Clough, which was the very first work collectively acquired by ncas members. Other artists featured in the exhibition include Ruth Ewan, Maggi Hambling, Nigel Henderson, Allen Jones, Frances Kearney, Penny Slinger, Mary Webb and many others.

The exhibition runs from until 28 February 2027 in the Timothy Gurney Gallery.

ncas members enjoy free admission to the Castle Museum & Gallery.