Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscapes

Forbidden Territories will mark 100 years of ‘Surrealism’, since its origins in 1924 with the publication of the ‘Surrealist Manifesto’ by the poet and critic André Breton. Surrealism has become one of the most influential artistic, intellectual and literary movements of the 20th Century, and continues to inspire artists working today.

This exhibition will take you on a journey through the fantastical terrains of Surrealism over 100 years, looking at how Surreal ideas can turn landscape into a metaphor for the unconscious, fuse the bodily with the botanical, and provide means to express political anxieties, gender constraints and freedoms. Trans-historical, thematic groupings of artwork will bring together artists of Breton’s circle from the 1920s, Salvador Dalí, Eileen Agar, Lee Miller and Max Ernst, among others, alongside later Surrealists such as Leonora Carrington, Edith Rimmington, Marion Adnams, Conroy Maddox, Desmond Morris and more, and contemporary artists working within the legacy of Surrealism such as Shuvinai Ashoona, Stefanie Heinze, Helen Marten, Nicolas Party, and Wael Shawky.

Continuing to create conversations across the century, a final section will bring together new work by contemporary artists María Berrío and Ro Robertson alongside Surrealists Ithell Colquhoun and Dora Maar, to explore ideas of identity and autofiction within bodies of water.

A solo presentation of paintings and prints by Mary Wykeham will feature within the exhibition. This will be the largest public showing of Wykeham’s work since her solo show of 1949 at Galerie des Deux Îles, Paris, and marks the donation of a large group of works by this under-recognised Surrealist artist to The Hepworth Wakefield.

Accompanying the exhibition is a new illustrated book, Forbidden Territories, edited by Eleanor Clayton, Head of Collection and Exhibitions at The Hepworth Wakefield, and published by Thames & Hudson.

Exhibition Supporters 

This exhibition is supported by a Curatorial Research Grant from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.