Cloth and Culture Now, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich

If, before entering an exhibition, you were told that it would use contemporary textile work to explore cultural identity, you might be forgiven for thinking twice about going in.

The beauty of Cloth and Culture Now is precisely that it doesn't tell you what to think before you enter. But looking at the diverse range of work by international artists, and reading the concise and unpretentious labels, subtle themes emerge.

About halfway through, you do actually begin to think about cultural identity and the impact of traditional craft skills and folk art on contemporary society.

Curator Lesley Millar from the University College for the Creative Arts, Epsom, selected the artists from countries where textiles have traditionally played a central role, culturally and economically, and where contemporary practice draws on these long-held traditions.

Thirty-five artists from the UK, the Baltic states and Japan are brought together in this show. The artists work in textiles in their broadest sense, so everything from knitting, felting and weaving is represented, encompassing material ranging from fibreglass to bin bags.

The works are arranged in terms of their visual relationship, as opposed to national groups, across the Upper Gallery, Link area and Lower Gallery.

In the first gallery, the work of Japanese artist Shoko Nomura, LandscOpe, made from layers of washi (traditional Japanese paper), rubs shoulders with Mare Kelpman's Estonian National Embroidery 9th and 10th.

Nomura's paper "house" sits well next to Kelpman's enlarged hangings, which have the ephemeral quality of super-sized paper doilies. Both pieces let light through, which in Kelpman's case means the lace-like forms drawn from traditional patterns throw intricate shadows on the walls.

Also in this gallery is the beautiful work by Ieva Krumina. Nobody, a screen print on bin bags, portrays an army of golden knights who stand shoulder to shoulder staring blankly into the middle distance, until at the bottom of the work they disappear into a golden molten mass.

Some works reveal a shared context. Artists from the Baltic states use traditional crafts and skills that were nurtured during the years of the Soviet occupation and became an expression of covert national identity.

The diverse range of materials used by the artists in this show widens the definition of craft and textiles. Sue Lawty's Call and Response explores patterns and duplication through four different panels: strips of linen; woven lead wire; a grid of small stones; and a digital image of shimmering stones moving delicately, as if being blown by the wind.

Lithuania's Lina Jonike uses a combination of photography and embroidery in her work, Architectural Monument. An elderly woman stands before a small cabin in a forest clearing.

In the black-and-white image, she is wearing a flowery dress and holding forth a small posy of wild flowers. Forming a halo around her and the cabin is an embroidered arc of cornflower blue flowers - an arresting image.

It is not just in the use of materials that visitors should expect the unexpected. Humour is displayed in some unlikely forms. Freddie Robins from the UK uses a knitting machine that can turn out whole garments without seams.

She has used the machine to make full-size body suits, complete with knitted faces, which are laid out to resemble a crime scene, as if they had been gunned down after some bizarre masked robbery.

That the figures are produced via the Shima Seika WholeGarment machine at the University of Manchester, the city whose looms once powered the industrial revolution, adds poignancy to the piece.

Krista Leesi from Estonia also employs subtle humour. Her large patchwork quilt, For Your Eyes Only, is made up of black-and-white squares of material, some of which contain snatches of text such as "I'll be back", "FCUK" and "Men are Pigs".

It is only when you stand back from the work that the iconic image of 007 framed in the barrel of a gun becomes clear, as does the irony of recreating a typically male image using traditional female craft skills.

The exhibition continues in the Link downstairs. Calling it the Link makes it no less of a corridor, but the most is made of this awkward area. The first work on show is a long and narrow tapestry, Stars Underfoot - The Slow Reveal, by Michael Brennand-Wood from the UK.

This vibrant piece lights up the space with 3D shapes leaping out of the quirky solar system that Brennand-Wood has created.

Halfway down the Link, the exhibition is punctuated by a resource area where visitors are encouraged to contribute their own stories by writing, drawing or putting samples in a book.

You can even knit your own contribution - instructions are provided, although they are probably hard to follow for the novice knitter. But don't worry, if you want to brush up on your knitting, there is a programme of workshops, lectures and events.

The fact that you are in a corridor makes stumbling across the works more exciting. Set back after the resource area is Flame by Japanese artist Masae Bamba. Using traditional dyeing techniques, Bamba has created a work in which cloth flames leap up the walls and sparks fly out into the corridor.

At the end of the Link, past the centre's beautifully displayed reserve collection, a curved ramp takes visitors into the final gallery. Even this space has been inventively used to display Zane Berzina's Membranes series.

The Latvian artist has used textiles to recreate skin and membrane in small box-frames that guide the visitor gently down the slope into the Lower Gallery, where some of the larger pieces are on display.

The exhibition is the result of collaboration between the University College for the Creative Arts and the University of East Anglia. It's hard to see how an international exhibition of this size and scope could have come about otherwise.

This is a thought-provoking show based on rigorous research and executed with a light touch that fits the ethos of the Sainsbury Centre: look before learning.