'Sea Inside' featuring Laure Prouvost and Hiroshi Sugimoto at The Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, United Kingdom

28 May 2025

From 7 June – 26 October, The Sainsbury Centre presents 'Sea Inside' featuring Laure Prouvost and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Dr Sarah Wade (University of East Anglia) and Dr Pandora Syperek (Loughborough University London) have curated a unique oceanic experience that explores humanity’s interconnections, interrelationships, and immersion in oceans.

While some humans have pursued life above or under water – through seafaring, research, fishing or diving – others have and still are subjected to the horrors of forced or desperate maritime crossings. Yet the sea has often been viewed as a mysterious ‘other’, with its expansive surface and seemingly infinite depths dominating marine imagery in the history of Western art. Conversely, artworks in this exhibition explore the ways the oceans have been domesticated, reimagined on a bodily scale and brought inside to be tamed, contained or better understood.

Known for her immersive and mixed-media installations that combine film and installation in humorous and idiosyncratic ways, Laure Prouvost’s work addresses miscommunication and ideas becoming lost in translation. Playing with language as a tool for the imagination, Prouvost is interested in confounding linear narratives and expected associations among words, images and meaning.

Through photography, sculpture, architecture and performance, Hiroshi Sugimoto manipulates the inexorable march of time and the vast mysteries of space, stalling the clock in order to create monumental forms from historically significant or fleetingly poetic moments.

Find out more via The Sainsbury Centre.

Image: Laure Prouvost, Cooling System 2 (For global warming), 2017, Glass, framed watercolour drawing, wood stick, 226 x 52 cm, 89 x 20 1/2 in, © Laure Prouvost, Courtesy Lisson Gallery.