Sea Inside

Sea Inside

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to live underwater, to be inside a shell, or even the belly of a whale?

Featuring experimental contemporary artworks across a range of media by artists including Shuvinai Ashoona (b.1961), Marcus Coates (b.1968), Evan Ifekoya (b.1988), Laure Prouvost (b.1978) and Hiroshi Sugimoto (b.1948), 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.

Sea Inside turns our oceanic gaze towards the sea’s more intimate spaces – whether physical, psychological or imaginary – and dives into shared watery origins, Indigenous ways of life and the items we remove from the sea to display on land.

Sea Inside is part of a six-month season of interlinked exhibitions and events that explore the question Can the Seas Survive Us?

Images from top:

Shuvinai Ashoona, Composition (At the Dentist), 2022. Copyright Shuvinai Ashoona, courtesy of the collection of Alexander V. Petalas.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Devonian Period, 1992. Copyright Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy of Lisson Gallery