Ziggurat Habitat

This exhibition brings together artwork made by the Young Associates, a group of young people aged 16-25 years old who co-create projects with us at the Sainsbury Centre. We set the group the challenge of imagining the lives of objects in the Sainsbury Collection.

Part of the exhibition is inspired by the Votive Figure, who would probably have stood inside a ziggurat in ancient Mesopotamia, and who now (4000 years later) lives here in the Sainsbury Centre, next-door to another stepped building: Denys Lasdun’s ziggurats, which form part of the student accommodation at UEA. The Young Associates’ sculptures explore ideas around hybridity: ziggurats merge with body, and body becomes an ancient landscape.

Young Associates have each chosen an object from the Sainsbury Collection and imagined where else it might have been at key moments in its life. Their sculptures return objects to former habitats and show scenes from long-distant lives: a Francis Bacon painting goes back to his studio, the Walking Hippopotamus guides an ancient Egyptian to the afterlife, and Henry Moore’s Mother and Child are seen mid-birth. Other objects are placed back in the hands that made them or are returned to an imagined landscape in their country of origin.

Young Associates is a free creative programme for young people aged 16-25 years old to try out new ideas, learn new skills, share work, meet artists, and join a network of new collaborators. Guided by artist Anna Brass and Nell Croose Myhill from the Sainsbury Centre, Young Associates explore digital, art historical and counter-cultural practices, and use the Sainsbury Centre Collections as a starting point for creative projects.

Image: Milliella King