We are delighted to announce details of a 15-minute film enabling viewers at home to enjoy the highly successful Art Deco by the Sea exhibition, available to view on BBC iPlayer. This project is part of BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine initiative which is designed to bring the best of arts and culture into the homes of audiences during this lockdown period. It is a great pleasure for the Sainsbury Centre to reconnect with members of the public and share its current major exhibition, organised in partnership with the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, on such a prominent BBC platform. This BBC iPlayer ‘Museums in Quarantine’ film gives future visitors to the exhibition an insightful preview of its wonders, and also reach a vast number of people who would otherwise have been unable to see it. Viewers can see highlights from this exciting new exhibition examining British coastal culture between the First and Second World Wars and the Art Deco style. Through selected works in all media including paintings, posters, brochures, drawings, photographs, fashion, furniture, ceramics and textiles, the film explores how Art Deco transformed the British seaside in a new age of mass tourism. Striking examples of Art Deco in Britain include iconic architecture from hotels and apartment blocks to cinemas and amusement parks, demonstrating how it became the seaside style. Beautiful designs from companies such as Poole Pottery, EKCO Radio and Crysède textiles show how the seaside became a site for innovative modern manufacture. Coastal amusements and activities which took off in the 1920s and 30s with the advent of healthy body culture are explored alongside sumptuous Art Deco fashion and the more ephemeral, popular culture of the seaside such as circuses, fairgrounds, pleasure parks, fun fairs and illuminations. In addition, a significant group of paintings explore how a fashion for realism underpinned much imagery of the seaside during the period. Ghislaine Wood, Acting Director and curator of the exhibition says, “The Art Deco by the Sea exhibition can now be experienced by people across the UK and the world. At this challenging time, there could be no better moment to examine Art Deco as a style that celebrated pleasure and escape.” Speaking about Museums in Quarantine and MuseumFromHome, Jonty Claypole, Director of BBC Arts, says: “These are buildings which carry our national collections and set the cultural agenda through exhibitions and artist commissions. They are, to an extent, the soul of our nation, revealing our history, our customs, our identity, and where we are heading. […] The ambition is simple: to ensure the public continues to have access to the collections and exhibitions they love even when they cannot enter the buildings that house them.” The Art Deco by the Sea exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre is curated by Ghislaine Wood, Acting Director. A major new publication, accompanies the show, edited by Ghislaine Wood with essays by Professor Bruce Peter, Glasgow School of Art; Gill Saunders, Victoria & Albert Museum and Professor Vanessa Toulmin, Sheffield University. The exhibition is organised by the Sainsbury Centre, Norwich in partnership with the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, where it will transfer to later in the autumn.
