SEA Foundation Tilburg

SEA Foundation Tilburg is a Dutch non-profit, artist-led organisation established in 2013 in Tilburg, Netherlands. It provides residencies for artistic research, experimentation, and production, from which an ongoing public programme of exhibitions, screenings, talks, workshops, and publications emerges. The organisation focuses on challenging perceptions of what constitutes contemporary art and bringing audiences closer to the practices that motivate its production. Founded by Jan-Willem van Rijnberk and Yvonne Elias, SEA Foundation operates as an agile, holacratic network rather than a conventional institutional structure.

SEA Foundation was founded in 2013 by Jan-Willem van Rijnberk and Yvonne Elias. From its inception, the organisation adopted an agile, holacratic model in which self-directed teams drive activities through overlapping roles and circles. This peer-learning structure involves volunteers including artists, curators, support staff, and board members who share insights and networks collaboratively. In 2019, SEA Foundation partnered with Cove Park in Scotland to stimulate artist exchanges. The organisation is also a member of Res Artis, an international network for artist residencies.

Rather than maintaining a permanent collection in the traditional museum sense, SEA Foundation's core activity centres on tailor-made residencies through its AiR Tilburg programme, founded in 2013. The programme provides professionals in the visual arts with opportunities for artistic research and new productions. Approximately eight residencies are offered annually, with residents selected through nominations or an annual open call. The public programme that emerges from these residencies spans exhibitions, screenings, talks, workshops, and publications, with a focus on production processes and audience engagement with contemporary art practices.

SEA Foundation does not hold a permanent collection of artworks. Its programme is instead built around temporary productions and exhibitions arising from its residency programme. Former residents have included Eloísa Ibarra, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, Yelena Popova, and Thomas Braida. Selected recent exhibitions include: Max Hattler in 2013 during Playgrounds Festival; John Dyer Baizley's The Virgin Spring in collaboration with Roadburn Festival, also 2013; Katerina Athanasopoulou's The Architecture of Melancholy: Ruins in 2015; Claudia de la Torre's BackBoneBooks and Jens Standke's A Tape Runs On in Silence in collaboration with Incubate festival, both 2016; Mila Lanfermeijer's Ever so Humble, Ever so Proud and Iwona Rozbiewska's The Tales That Follow, both 2018; Jon Tarry's Catching the Moment and Collette Rayner's I Presume You Pictured it Differently, both 2019; and Freja Niemann Lundrup's Making the Unseen Seen in 2020.

SEA Foundation is located on Tivolistraat in the city centre of Tilburg. The building originally belonged to Gust van Dijk (1884-1977), a Tilburg-based tobacco merchant. In the 1930s, van Dijk commissioned the construction of a retail residence on the former Bosscheweg in the style of the New Objectivity. The building includes a gallery on the ground floor and two Artist in Residence studios to facilitate professional artists, curators, and writers. The street is tree-lined and one-way, leading into the pedestrian area of Tilburg city centre.

SEA Foundation is open to visitors on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday during exhibitions. Visitors to the studios, project space, and library may also arrange appointments outside regular hours by telephone at +31135444495 or by email to info at seafoundation.eu. The premises are approximately a twelve-minute walk eastward from Tilburg main train station. For those arriving by car, parking options include the Spoorlaan and Dunantstraat paid parking lots, both under 100 metres away, or the Tivoli garage at approximately 200 metres.