Sutapa Biswas: Ballad of the Flowers

Sutapa Biswas brings Ballad of the Flowers to East Gallery on 6 November, the UK debut of her new film. It's not just the film on its own, either: it's shown alongside accompanying paintings and photographic works, so you'll get the full picture rather than just the screen. The film was developed through the East Gallery Fellowship at Norwich University of the Arts and filmed right here in Norwich's Plantation Garden, which gives it a local connection that's easy to spot if you know the place.

Through flowers, dance, performance and stories of trade, the film looks at how the tangled legacies of empire still shape questions of power and identity. It's a continuation of the mercantile colonial histories and issues of gender and class that have underpinned Biswas's work for four decades, so it sits within a long, consistent thread of enquiry rather than standing as a one-off.

Biswas is a significant figure in British contemporary art, and her practice reaches across painting, drawing, film, photography, installation and performance to examine colonialism, migration, race, gender and representation. She graduated with a BA from Leeds University in 1985, completed a postgraduate degree at the Slade in 1990 and was a research student at the Royal College of Art. She was also part of Britain's Black Arts Movement, showing in Lubaina Himid's landmark Thin Black Line at the ICA in 1985. She's been an East Gallery Fellow since 2023 and was awarded an Honorary Professorship in 2026.

The exhibition opens on 6 November and runs through to 23 January 2027, so there's plenty of time to catch it. There's a preview evening on Thursday 5 November from 5pm to 7pm, and after that, the gallery is open Tuesday to Friday 12pm to 5pm and Saturday 12pm to 4pm. Tickets are free. You'll find it at East Gallery, Cavendish House, St Andrews Street, Norwich NR2 4AE.