As part of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival 2018, the Sainsbury Centre welcomes three monumental ‘Beasts’ by leading British sculptor Lynn Chadwick (1914 – 2003) which will take up residence in the Sculpture Park from 11 May 2018 – 31 August 2019. This project forms part of the 40th anniversary celebrations for the Sainsbury Centre. Generously lent by the Chadwick Estate and organised in association with Blain|Southern, the Beasts will be situated in the east end garden immediately outside the east façade of the Sainsbury Centre building. The three large scale sculptures, Crouching Beast II, Beast Alerted I and Lion I, conceived in 1990, are animals captured in various states of dynamic action.

Their stretching, crouching or resting poses are described through faceted, geometric planes of welded stainless-steel. The Beasts, completed late in Chadwick’s career, continue a theme he had first begun to explore in the early 1950s - figures and animals caught in various states of movement. He described this as capturing ‘attitude,’ saying “I would call it attitude…the way that you can actually make something almost talk by the way the neck is bent, or the attitude of the head”. Having trained as an architectural draughtsman, Chadwick was throughout his career particularly sensitive to the role of public sculpture in the context of modern architecture. He made two works for the Festival of Britain and his work was positioned in the public spaces of post-war cities and New Towns. For many architects of the 1950s and 60s Chadwick’s work was seen to perfectly complement the striking modern style of much new public architecture and urban space.

This project will situate Chadwick’s Beasts, in the context of the both Norman Foster’s Sainsbury Centre, one of Britain’s foremost steel space frame buildings, and Denys Lasdun’s monumental, Brutalist campus architecture for the University of East Anglia. The Beasts brilliantly reflect a spirit of architectural experimentation in both the forms of their construction and the use of steel as a material for sculpture.

The project will also continue the momentum built with the installation of Anthony Gormley’s 3x ANOTHER TIME and Tatlin’s Tower in 2017. The Sculpture Park consists of 320 acres of natural and the built environment on the UEA campus and combines iconic architecture, art and nature in an outdoor space free for everyone to enjoy.