An Impossible Journey, the first major UK exhibition of Polish artist Tadeusz Kantor’s work for over 30 years, opens at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich, on Tuesday 2 June and runs until Sunday 30 August. The Sainsbury Centre has been working with
Cricoteka, Kraków, and the Norfolk and Norwich Festival to develop the exhibition. An Impossible Journey runs concurrently with Take a Look at Me Now: Contemporary Art from Poland.

The exhibitions have been developed by the Sainsbury Centre and are part of two UK cultural celebrations this summer; POLSKA! YEAR and Contemporary Art Norwich 09 (CAN09).

Tadeusz Kantor was one of the most extraordinary and versatile artists of the 20th century. Born in Galicia at the start of the First World War, he worked in Kraków, where he died shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Painter, stage-designer and accomplished draftsman, as well as performer and poet, Kantor made his name as a man of the avant-garde theatre.

Combining virtually all art forms, he mesmerised audiences all over the world, including Edinburgh and London, with his dark performances, of a rare emotional intensity, which mixed the traumatic with theabsurd, the personal with the historical, the living with the dead and actors with mannequins.

An Impossible Journey will feature a range of theatrical objects, mannequins and drawings related to these performances, alongside archival films of these performances, as well as stage designs and paintings. A documentary section of the exhibition with photographs and films will outline Kantor’s artistic development in an historical context.

The exhibition will also include documentation of Kantor’s visits to Britain, including a display of archival records, developed by Jo Melvin and David Gothard, together with little known photographs of his performances in Edinburgh, London Riverside Studio and Cardiff, and the material related to his exhibition in Whitechapel, curated by Sir Nicholas Serota in 1976. A series of interviews with the leaders of the British art world of today, who had met Kantor at the beginning of their careers, will also help to reveal and contextualise his impact on the arts in Britain.

For information about the event: www.scva.ac.uk

Radio ORLA fm is delighted to be a media patron for this event.