Art Deco by the Sea (Exhibition and Exhibition Catalogue)
- Submitting institution
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The University of East Anglia
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 186152818
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Art Deco by the Sea was an interdisciplinary research project comprising an exhibition held at the Sainsbury Centre, UEA (Feb.–Sept. 2020) and The Laing Gallery of Art Gallery, Newcastle (Oct. 2020–Feb. 2021), and a related publication. The project focussed on the wealth of Britain’s regional collections to assess for the first time the impact of the Art Deco style on British coastal culture, lifestyle, and leisure. The research questions were:
-In what ways did Art Deco contribute to a vision of a democratised seaside in a period of significant social change?
-Why did the popular culture of the seaside embrace the Art Deco style, and how did this shape mass audiences’ experience of modernity through the ephemeral cultures of the sea front, fun fairs, and new types of holiday?
-What are the common concerns and approaches that unite many areas of cultural production, including painting that can be described as Art Deco?
-How does the modernisation of traditions shape art, architecture and design in 1930s Britain?
The project identified, researched and displayed previously unknown objects including examples from the Blackpool Pleasure Beach private archive and the Butlin’s archive held at the History of Advertising Trust. The research demonstrated how Art Deco shaped the British seaside experience and became the key style for pleasure and leisure, symbolising new values for people experiencing new freedoms, particularly women. The exhibition, comprising over 200 objects, interrogated these ideas in architecture, design, furniture, fashion, funfairs, film, graphics, painting, and sculpture. It was the most comprehensive on British Art Deco since The Thirties, Hayward Gallery (1976). The publication included essays that explored the research themes in more depth.
Evidence of the exhibition and publication as research and dissemination, and the impact of Covid-19 on the public engagement programme can be found in the portfolio.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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