Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts: Can the Seas Survive Us?

Publication accompanies the exhibition season at Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, 15 March - 21 September 2025. Addressing one of the urgent issues of climate crisis, this book aims to raise awareness by exploring through art the challenges of humanity’s relationship to the sea.

Addressing one of the urgent issues of climate crisis and environmental pollution, this book explores our relationship to the sea: how we live alongside it, our bodily relationship to it, its role in the creation of a connected, global society and, perhaps most critically, the threat we pose to it.

Through a broad selection of works by contemporary international artists, Can the Sea Survive Us? responds to the urgent need to resuscitate our seas. While the oceanic environment is essential to all life, its vulnerability to human action is highlighted by an ever-increasing loss of biodiversity. This book prompts the reader to imagine a future in which collective human behavior can mitigate the effects of climate change. As ocean temperatures reach record highs, it is clear that time is not on our side. This ambitious project aspires to accelerate climate awareness and deliver the critical climate action we urgently need.

John Kenneth Paranada serves as the Curator of Art and Climate Change at the Sainsbury Centre, funded by the John Ellerman Foundation, and is a researcher at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, UEA. His interdisciplinary expertise spans museum studies, curatorial studies, art history, community engagement, climate communication and energy management. In 2023, he curated ’Sediment Spirit’ and co-edited the publication Planet For Our Future. Specializing in international contemporary art, sustainability and planetary ecology, Ken focuses on curating art and culture to accelerate climate awareness and action. He is affiliated with international organizations such as the International Council of Museums, the Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art and the Association of Art Museum Curators, amongst others. Tania Moore is head of exhibitions at the Sainsbury Centre. Tania was exhibition curator for the ’What is Truth?’ season at the Sainsbury Centre. Publications include What Is Truth? (Sainsbury Centre, 2024), and Rhythm and Geometry: Constructivist Art in Britain Since 1951 (Sainsbury Centre, 2021). She has contributed chapters on post-war and contemporary sculpture to publications including Magdalene Odundo: The Journey of Things (InOther Words, 2019), Elisabeth Frink: Humans and Other Animals (Sainsbury Centre, 2018) and Becoming Henry Moore (Henry Moore Foundation, 2017). In 2019, she received the New Collecting Award from the Art Fund to acquire sculptors’ drawings by contemporary women and non-binary artists for the Sainsbury Centre collection.