NORWICH, UK.- The Norwich Gallery at Norwich School of Art and Design presents EASTinternational 05, on view through August 20, 2005. The selector was Gustav Metzger. Artists include: Doug Fishbone, Radio Goya, Bernard Debaillie, Dan Tombs, Lee Holden, Daniel Bell, Mark Wilsher, Simon Faithfull, Michael Takeo Magruder, Melissa Bliss, Asnat Austerlitz, Sarah Pickering, John Kelly, Carrie Levy, Kaori Nakayama, Wolfgang Fiel, Jill Miller, Mustafa Hulusi & John-Joseph Charlesworth, Alan Dunn, Simon Morris, Making Things Better, Alec Finlay, Michael Weinkove, Peter Kennard & Cat Picton Phillips, Riichi Yamaguchi, and Simon O’Sullivan & David Burrows.

This EAST exhibition began with the idea of “resistance”. The work of many artists does not fit the object-based priorities of commercial art galleries and collectors. This exhibition includes artists with political agendas critical of existing structures. Many young artists are concerned with resistance to war, the manipulation of truth, climate change or bio-technology. Roger Ackling proposed to the EAST Steering Committee that the artist best placed to select such an exhibition was Gustav Metzger.

Twenty six artists from Europe, America, Asia and the Middle East were chosen for the fifteenth EASTinternational exhibition. The artists are producing work connecting the extreme realities that affect us all: Wars, Holocaust, Politicians, Explosions, Detention, Manifestos, Torture and Greed. Themes like old age and deprived youth will also be addressed. Using video installations, performance, live web broadcasts, blogs, email and other electronic media, we anticipate EAST 05 will be a challenging exhibition, functioning on a twenty-four hour basis, extending into the City of Norwich.

Gustav Metzger was born in Nürnberg in 1926 of Polish Jewish parents. He and his brother Mendel came to England in 1939 on the Kindertransport. He has been a stateless person since 1948. Trained as a cabinet maker in Leeds during the last war he lived in Kings Lynn in Norfolk during the 1950’s where he organized two art exhibitions. He studied drawing with David Bomberg. A founder member of the committee of 100, he was jailed for his part in civil disobedience against what Bertrand Russell called ‘weapons of mass annihilation’. Metzger initiated the Destruction in Art Symposium which took place in London in September 1966. He was included into the “Art in Society/Society in Art: Seven German Artists” exhibition at the ICA in 1974. An exhibition of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford 1988-1999. A retrospective exhibition will be shown at the Generali Foundation, Vienna, from 10 May this year, and his liquid crystal projections will be shown at the Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era exhibition at Tate Liverpool, opening on 27 May 2005. There will be a one-person show “Eichmann and the Angel” at Cubitt Gallery, London in September 2005.