EASTinternational


EASTinternational, often shortened to EAST, was an annual open-submission exhibition selected by invited guests – artists, critics, museum directors and gallerists – that occurred in Norwich University College of the Arts between July and August from 1991 to 2009. Organised by Lynda Morris, devised with artist-educator Manuel Chetcuti, it formed a central part of the Norwich Gallery programme where Morris was curator from 1980–2007. EAST took place in the nineteenth-century art school studios and hallways in the summer months after the degree shows ended, in the Norwich Gallery space, and, occasionally, in off-site public locations around the city of Norwich.
Known initially as EAST National Open Art Exhibition, when it began in 1991 the name alluded to the art school’s regional geographical position in the east of England and, as Morris later recalled, the end of the bipolar western order augured by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 – the opening up of the east.

Selectors

Selectors for each EAST were invited by Lynda Morris and the EAST steering committee to reflect emerging political, social and artistic trends. The choice of selectors for EASTinternational was an expression of Morris’s social and professional networks. The selectors, in turn, utilised their social and professional networks. Typically, an artist was invited first to select EAST who, in turn, invited someone.
An award of £5,000 is given to an artist chosen by the selectors to help develop their work.
Almost every edition of EAST received critical attention, whether in the art press or regional and mainstream national newspapers. William Feaver, art critic for the Guardian, was an early advocate in 1991, as was Adrian Searle writing on the very last edition in 2009 for the same paper. Aside from sporadic reviews in frieze, A-N Magazine, Third Text or Modern Painters, Art Monthly, the leading chronicle of British art, ran reviews of almost every edition.