EASTinternational

EASTinternational, often shortened to EAST, was an annual open-submission exhibition selected by invited guests – artists, critics, museum directors and gallerists – that occurred in Norwich University College of the Arts between July and August from 1991 to 2009. Organised by Lynda Morris, devised with artist-educator Manuel Chetcuti, it formed a central part of the Norwich Gallery programme where Morris was curator from 1980–2007. EAST took place in the nineteenth-century art school studios and hallways in the summer months after the degree shows ended, in the Norwich Gallery space, and, occasionally, in off-site public locations around the city of Norwich.

Known initially as EAST National Open Art Exhibition, when it began in 1991 the name alluded to the art school’s regional geographical position in the east of England and, as Morris later recalled, the end of the bipolar western order augured by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 – the opening up of the east.