PLAY POWER: The Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, UK
Exploring the concept of play in human cultures, 'Play Power' reflects on the broader significance of play and how play is integrated into our daily lives and asks whether we would live a more meaningful life if play were a central focus of day-to-day living.Showcasing a variety of manifestations of play, both past and present, ranging from board games, games of chance, physical activity, creativity, video games and make believe, as well as ritual gambling and divination, the exhibition highlights the enduring role of play in shaping human societies. It includes historical objects and artworks such as an ancient Egyptian senet board and game pieces, William Hogarth’s paintings A House of Cards (c.1730) and A Children’s Tea Party (1730), Germaine Richier’s Chessboard, Large Version (1959) and iconic toys, such as Bird and Fish, designed by Patrick Rylands. Work by artists including André Breton, Eileen Agar, John Armstrong, Leo Robinson, Sir John Lavery and Lygia Clark is also on display.Play Power is curated by Tania Moore, Head of Exhibitions at the Sainsbury Centre. This exhibition is part of the Sainsbury Centre's 'What is the Meaning of Life?' season.
For Play Power, the Sainsbury Centre’s 2026 exhibition exploring the cross-cultural and transhistorical significance of play, Eamon O’Kane’s Froebel Studio: History of Play will serve as a central contemporary counterpoint to historic works from the collection. Presented within the exhibition’s opening section, focusing on play, development, and psychology, O’Kane’s immersive installation reflects on the formative philosophies of Friedrich Froebel and Maria Montessori, whose ideas transformed early childhood education and shaped our understanding of creativity, curiosity, and embodied learning.
O’Kane’s long-standing engagement with the legacy of Froebel is rooted in his research into the origins of modernism and the pedagogical systems that informed major cultural and artistic shifts. In Froebel Studio: History of Play, he reconstructs and reimagines the learning environments associated with Froebel’s “gifts” and Montessori’s sensorial materials, inviting visitors to consider how these objects have influenced generations of children, and how they continue to resonate with artists, architects, and designers. His studio environments operate both as sculptures and as functional creative spaces, encouraging tactile exploration and emphasising the role of the hand, the body, and intuition in the learning process.
Within the context of the Sainsbury Centre collection, O’Kane’s project creates a living dialogue with artefacts and artworks that demonstrate humanity’s enduring relationship with play. From ritual objects and teaching tools to modernist explorations of form, colour, and geometry, the collection embodies the universal impulse to experiment, build, and imagine. Placing O’Kane’s work alongside these materials highlights the continuity between early developmental play and later acts of artistic creation, showing how the structures of childhood experimentation underpin cultural expression across time and place.
As Play Power forms part of the Sainsbury Centre’s wider season investigating What is the Meaning of Life?, O’Kane’s Froebel-inspired environments offer an intimate response: meaning emerges through making. By foregrounding play not as diversion but as a profound mode of thinking, testing, and becoming, O’Kane underscores the idea that playful engagement is foundational to how individuals develop, how societies innovate, and how cultures evolve.
Through this lens, Froebel Studio: History of Play becomes both an artwork and an active site of inquiry, a space where historical theories of childhood meet contemporary artistic practice, and where visitors are invited to reconsider the fundamental importance of play in shaping human experience.
https://www.uea.ac.uk/events/play-power
Artists
Patrick Rylands
Enzo Mari
Vincent James
Eamon O’Kane
Wassily Kandinsky
Paul Klee
Lyonel Feininger
André Breton, Elise Breton and Benjamin Peret
André Breton
John Banting, Eileen Agar, Sir Roland Penrose and Antonio Dacosta
Eileen Agar
Lygia Clark
Simon Nicholson
Follower of Edwaert Collier
John Armstrong
Leo Robinson
Germaine Richier
Gordon Onslow Ford
Yoko Ono
Sir John Lavery
The Lysippides Painter
Colin Moss
Chris McGrath
Jakob Meckel
Lieutenant Claude Henry Parnall
Classwargames: Richard Barbrook, Fabian Tompsett, Ilze Black, James Moulding, Simon Youel, Richard Parry, Dave Levy, Victor Fleurot, Alex Veness, Rod Dickinson, Mark Copplestone, Lucy Blake, Stefan Lutschinger and Elena Vorontsova Duffield
Buckminster Fuller
Niki de Saint Phalle
Olivia Plender
L.S. Lowry
Roger Mayne
Shirley Baker
Paul Kaye
Media Molecule x Marshmallow Laser Feast
