Norfolk Contemporary Art 2010
Open selling exhibition at the Forum, 1st July to 21st July, 2010

You can download the exhibition notes and the submission form here as pdf files:

Exhibition Notes

Submission Form

Good news in troubled times! Following up on the terrific success of the open selling show we held in the summer of 2008, jointly with the Forum Trust, NCAS are delighted that once again we have teamed up with them to deliver Norfolk Contemporary Art 2010. On the one hand this is a great opportunity for artist members of NCAS to showcase work in a brilliant city centre venue that gets 50,000 visitors a week, and on the other, for the rest of us, it is a wonderful opportunity to buy work selected from the truly exceptional artistic talent concentrated here in Norfolk.

Ian Collins (writer and EDP Art Correspondent) and Derek Morris (sculptor and NCAS committee member) will jointly curate the exhibition.

The Exhibition notes outline the curatorial, selection and submission processes for this ambitious exhibition. The exhibition will occupy the whole of the Forum Atrium, on their now well-used and familiar MilaWall system, and we are planning that a corresponding gallery of artwork and artists talking about their work will accompany it in Fusion, the Forum’s very effective new digital gallery. There is a small, one-off artist’s submission fee of £5, which will help offset some of the costs of staging and managing the exhibition. The commission charged on sales, 25%, is low by current standards, and this will be shared equally by the two charities, the NCAS and the Forum Trust.

And if, for some inexplicable reason, you are not a current member of NCAS, don’t despair. Just join the society quickly and then submit your work in plenty of time for the 12th April deadline! Membership forms can be downloaded from this site.

The Norfolk Contemporary Art Society is a voluntary association with some 350 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, in 2007 we purchased a video for its collection, Ruth Ewan’s Rebel’s Complaint, and in 2008 we contributed a painting, Rosie Snell's 'Stalker'.

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 30 pieces which can be viewed on this website by following the art works collection links. The Society is always on the look out for new potential spaces for the exhibition of individual Art Works.

The NCAS regular mounts major art exhibitions, of which the most recent was 'PhotoID' at the Forum, Norwich in August 2009, a science/art exhibition sponsored by the Wellcome Trust. This followed another Wellcome Trust-funded exhibition, 'Making Faces' in 2007. '50 years on: Norfolk Contemporary Art Society at Norwich Castle' in 2006 showed some 30 of the works the Society has donated to the Castle over these years. 'Norfolk Contemporary Art 2008', a selling exhibition of members' work was held at the Forum in August 2008, and another selling exhibition is planned for 2010.

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 the Henry Moore Institute and Sculpture Park in September 2008. 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 and those on benefits are admitted to events at members' rates. A membership form can be downloaded from this site by following the membership links.