Can the Seas Survive Us? Exploring the Sainsbury Centre’s North Sea exhibition

New exhibitions at Norwich’s Sainsbury Centre examine the future of our oceans. With one show looking at the dangers posed by rising North Sea levels, I travelled to the Netherlands to see how experts are rethinking our relationship with water.

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The Netherlands has lots of water, as anyone who’s ever sailed Amsterdam’s canals can tell you. But unfortunately, it’s soon going to get lots more.

With rising North Sea levels, the country will be fully submerged in 1,000 years.

That was the stark warning I was given recently, sitting in a grand meeting room at the UNESCO-backed IHE Delft Institute — a university-like body dedicated to global water challenges. With over a quarter of the country already below sea level, the message was clear: rising seas are an existential threat to the whole Dutch nation.

My party of press visiting the Norfolk Record Office. Photo: maxwell museums

The Sainsbury Centre in Norwich know this all too well too. They've just opened Can the Seas Survive Us?, a new season of concurrent exhibitions about our “overwhelmed” oceans.

Norwich and the North Sea: A World of Water

I was in Delft on a press trip to learn more about one of the Sainsbury’s shows in this season: A World of Water. It looks at the global human impact on oceans, but at its core is the story of the North Sea’s relationship to both Norfolk and the Netherlands over the centuries.

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Curated by John Kenneth Paranada (who is actually the first curator of art and climate change in any UK museum), the exhibition features works by British and international artists from as early as 1540 right up to the present day. By examining East Anglia’s deep maritime connections to the Low Countries of Europe, it shows visitors just how important our interconnected seas are in shaping our world.

And so I soon found myself heading to both sides of the North Sea to find out more. Before heading to Holland, my first stop was Norwich to preview some of the historical objects going into the exhibition.

Maps and migration: Norfolk Archives' treasures

In the Norfolk Record Office, I was amazed by the ‘Hutch Map’, a 16th-century depiction of what they thought East Anglia’s coast looked like at the end of the first millennium. It’s stunning and fascinating, not least because it’s painted on the hide of a sheep and is full of staggering artistic license.

I also saw the remarkable Dutch and Walloon Strangers Book, a log from the 1600s of the immigrants from the Low Countries who came to work in the local textile industry, and who at one point made up a third of Norwich’s population. Reading it was a reminder that the sea has always been part of Britain’s story (and a reminder of the vital role of civic archives.)

Harwich to the Hook of Holland

After the Record Office, I was retracing the journey of those migrants four-centuries ago, and heading to Holland by boat.

Sailing was of course the only way to travel on this maritime exploration. My overnight Stena Line ferry from Harwich to the Hook of Holland was an adventure all its own. I would definitely recommend it if you're heading to the Netherlands — it was hugely comfortable and was smooth sailing in every way. (Which probably is where it vastly differs to the same trip in the 17th century.)

Boris Maas in his Rotterdam studio. Photo — Kate Wolstenholme

On the Dutch-leg of my trip, I got to flavour the contemporary pieces that the Sainsbury Centre is getting on loan for its exhibition. I met artist Boris Maas and saw his installation The Urge to Sit Dry, an elevated chair which has its height adjusted to the predicted sea levels of the locations it’s shown in. In Norwich visitors will see it at 2m tall.

Inside the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam — the Dutch national design museum — I was fascinated with a Tracy Island-esque model for an unrealised 1970s house on a Bahamian island. That too can be seen by visitors in Norwich as we speak.

Zeckendorf House, 1973. In the collection of the Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam. Photo: maxwell museums

Fighting water with water in the Netherlands

So, can we survive the seas? Or vice-versa as the exhibition title cleverly riffs on? Well in the Netherlands, they are fighting back, because they have no choice.

My Dutch travels took in the country's work at the forefront of water management.

I saw first-hand how water is being recycled in a community-minded project in the heart of one of the Hague’s less-affluent neighbourhoods (the water is used for a city farm — yes I did pet a massive pig thanks for asking).

A few miles up the road, I stood on a magnificent, film-set-like artificial beach that’s been created to halt devastating coastal erosion. Called a 'Sand Motor', it's used daily by locals as a vast new recreation spot. But the reality is it's doing a hugely vital job of acting as a barrier, preventing the waves doing more damage to miles of Dutch coastline.

The enormous artificial beach — the ‘sand motor’ — near the Hague. Photo courtesy of Kate Wolstenholme

And I saw how the Tidal Park Keilehaven is a dynamic public space shaped by tidal movements in Rotterdam. The award-winning tidal park is the brainchild of architecture firm De Urbanisten and is also protecting the city for future generations.

Why the Sainsbury Centre’s new season matters

My whirlwind trip (or should that be whirlpool?) taught me two things.

One was that if we do survive rising sea levels, it’ll be thanks in part to the innovation of passionate people in the Netherlands (and they will be owed our largest of thanks).

The other is that the Sainsbury Centre’s innovative way of programming shows so they can deep-dive into major issues is inspired. With the latest exhibition season, I say cross land — or sea — to visit.

A World of Water is now open at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, and runs until 05 August 2025. I was a guest of Visit Netherlands and Stena Line.

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More from the Netherlands:

• This year's must-see art exhibitions in Dutch cities

• These are the museums you should visit when in the Hague

• Here's why Van Gogh Museum Director cut visitor numbers after 'too much growth