News and Events

March 2025

An Ocean of Connection: Oceanic art, artists and museums

Wednesday 18 June – Friday 20 June 2025

Since the 1980s, Oceanic scholars such as Wendt 1982, Hau‘ofa 1994, and Teaiwa 2014, have responded to the tendency resulting from colonialism and developmentalism, for Oceania to be divided into clearly delineated and distinct areas, by reminding Islanders and non-Islanders alike that the Pacific Ocean is a linking pathway rather than a separating boundary. They emphasised the connection to the ocean for many people living in the region; a place defined by the seascape as much as the landscape. This discourse continues to resonate and inspire scholars, curators, artists and practitioners in the region and beyond.

The main conference theme is related to the Sainsbury Centre’s exhibition season Can the Seas Survive Us? The exhibition includes Oceanic contemporary art and community responses to the issues that the Pacific region faces, particularly in Yuki Kihara’s Paradise Camp. The conference will explore the Pacific Ocean as a relational entity, as a powerful metaphor for connection, as a pathway that is reclaimed by Oceanic people today by celebrating the impressive navigational skills of their ancestors when settling the islands, as well as a pathway used by collectors who shipped artefacts to museums

For enquiries please contact the Pacific Arts Association Europe at the Sainsbury Research Unit

To register and to purchase tickets please visit PAA Europe 2025 : An Ocean of Connection: Oceanic art, artists and museums | University of East Anglia Online Store

Accommodation

UEA campus: Broadview Lodge.

Norwich City Centre: Travelodge and Premier Inn hotels; the Georgian Townhouse; apartments at No 82 or Golden Triangle Townhouse.

Visual Pasts, Material Presents, Archival Futures: Postcolonial Temporalities in the Making - Graduate Conference 2025

This conference aims to bring together current research on visual, material and archival collections and explore the ways in which their materiality is shaped by time and place. Held in museums and archives, objects, natural specimens, human remains, photographs, films, sounds, drawings, documents and more embody the disruption created by missionaries, militaries, colonial officers, scientists, explorers or humble travellers in territories which endured colonisation. Through the act of collecting, classifying, storing and exhibiting, museums, anthropology and imperial politics shaped an ethnographic present in order to dominate colonised peoples, whose own temporalities had no space to exist.

Everything is Everything

Ronnie Archer-Morgan Seminar at the SRU

On Thursday 13 March 2025, Ronnie Archer-Morgan, collector, antique dealer, renowned expert on ethnic, tribal and folk art, and BBC Antiques Roadshow specialist, delivered a seminar that was nothing short of mesmerizing. His passion for the subject was evident as he captivated the audience with his vast knowledge, presenting objects as if they were alive, rich with history and untold stories. He painted vivid pictures of both ancient artifacts and modern creations, highlighting their role as expressions of human ingenuity and revealing the profound connections between the things we create and the way they shape our lives.
An unforgettable experience, which left the audience with a renewed reverence for the simple, everyday objects that hold so much profound meaning.