STOP PRESS: click for details and a submission form for the Norfolk Contemporary Art 2008 exhibition.

The Norfolk Contemporary Art Society is a voluntary association with some two hundred and fifty members which champions contemporary visual art, particularly that of artists working in the region.

Since it was founded in 1956, to encourage the Norwich Castle Museum to acquire work in the modern idiom to balance its fine collections of the nineteenth-century Norwich School of painters, the Society has acquired its own art collection which forms the basis of holdings in post-war art in the Castle. Among the items the NCAS has lent to the Castle are works by Edward Barker, Jeffrey Camp, David Carr, Prunella Clough, Alan Davie, Patrick George, Allen Jones, Peter Lanyon, Wyndham Lewis, F.E. McWilliam, Eduardo Paolozzi, Mary Potter, Anne Redpath, Alan Reynolds, Ceri Richards, Colin Self, Penny Slinger and Graham Sutherland. Among pieces that the Society has purchased and then given to the Norfolk Museums Service are works by Sandra Blow, Marc Chaimowicz, Ian Chance, Derrick Greaves, Nigel Henderson, Howard Hodgkin, John Hoyland, L.S. Lowry, Tom Phillips and Keith Vaughan. More recently, it has raised funds, often matched nationally pound-for-pound, to purchase sculpture for public places in Norwich. These include major pieces by George Fullard and Liliane Lijn, and a mural by Walter Kershaw. For the Castle Green, we commissioned a bronze, 'Parrot Head' by the late Bernard Reynolds and the aluminium 'Monument to Daedalus' by Jonathan Clarke. Mark Goldsworthy's 'Will Kemp and his Men', was hewn from an oak trunk in situ in Chapelfield Gardens, and Ros Newman's 'Bird Flight' is sited in the gardens of Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital. In 2006 we donated a work by the late Alfred Cohen to Norwich Castle Museum, and in 2007 we have purchased a video for its collection, Ruth Ewan’s Rebel’s Complaint.

The Society has a constantly growing on-loan collection, called Art Works. Mostly works in two dimensions by local artists, these are lent free of charge for display in places frequented by the public such as schools, hospitals, and business premises. Art Works now comprises over thirty pieces which can be viewed on this website by following the art works collection links. Most of them have been acquired either from the Norfolk and Norwich Festival's annual 'Open Studios' events or from the Norwich School of Art & Design's annual degree shows. The Society is always on the look out for new potential spaces for the exhibition of individual Art Works.

In 2006 the NCAS mounted two major exhibitions. The first celebrated the Society's fiftieth anniversary: '50 years on: Norfolk Contemporary Art Society at Norwich Castle', and showed some 30 of the works the Society has donated to the Castle over these years. 'Making Faces' at the Forum, Norwich was a SciArt event timed to coincide with the Annual Festival of the British Association to be held in Norwich in September 2006.

The NCAS mounts a lively programme of monthly events, mostly in Norwich, which include lectures by artists, critics and art historians, visits, auctions, private views, parties and happenings. Recent speakers at our meetings have included artist Maggi Hambling and Eddie Berg, Artistic Director of the National Centre for the Moving Image. The Society's next excursion will be to Pallent House, Chichester and Goodwood Sculpture Park in November 2007. Members are kept informed of the Society's forthcoming programme and, often, of other art events in the locality via our quarterly mailings and events leaflets and by the forthcoming events link on this website.

In the belief that raising the profile of the visual arts means effective networking, we collaborate closely with local galleries and other arts organisations such as the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norfolk Museums Service, Norfolk Association of Architects, Norfolk Open Studios, Norwich Arts Round Table, East Anglia Art Foundation and the John Innes Centre.

If you would like to consider joining an energetic and convivial group of people who are doing something positive for the visual arts, please follow the membership links. Annual membership is £10.00 for individuals and £15.00 for couples. Full-time students: £5.00. A membership form can be downloaded from this site by following the membership links.