Coinciding with the exhibition Lee Miller and Surrealism in Britain at The Hepworth Wakefield (22 June – 7 October 2018) this one-day international symposium aims to rethink Surrealism in Britain through an expanded lens. The deliberately broad time-frame allows for exploration of Surrealism’s presence in Britain before its supposed arrival in 1936 and in the post-war era.
Bridging fine art, fashion and journalism with an eye for the extraordinary, Lee Miller’s photography provides a useful starting point for a renewed consideration of a broad range of Surrealist practices as they unfolded in Britain between the 1920s and 1950s.
Questioning familiar narratives, the symposium aims to reconstruct intricate networks of artists and writers – friends, lovers and rivals – through which Surrealist ideas circulated and mutated during a turbulent historical period.
Supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
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Ticket price includes refreshments.
A proportion of tickets for all bookable events and workshops are available at member rate, find out more about membership.
PANEL ONE: Collecting and Display (chair: Eleanor Clayton)
Dr Caterina Caputo (The Frick Collection, New York): The London Gallery and the promotion of “new” Surrealists in the UK: the case of Paul Delvaux.
Katia Sowels (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris), The London Gallery as a Surrealist Laboratory: the Surrealist Objects & Poems Exhibition, November-December 1937
PANEL TWO: Surrealism and Popular Culture (chair: Dr Hilary Floe)
Dr Marjorie Coughlan (University of York): Surrealism, Surrealisation and Photomontage in the Public and Private Photography of Angus McBean (1904-1986)
Niall Billings (The Courtauld Institute), “In the end, she dies”: an exploration of surrealism within Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes
PANEL THREE: Surrealism and its Afterlives (chair: Clare Nadal)
Dr Lisa Maddigan Newby (University of East Anglia), Ethnographic Surrealism in Postwar London
Dr Catriona McAra (Leeds Arts University), Surrealist Souvenirs: The Prime Minister’s Bracelet and Leonora Carrington’s Postcards
KEYNOTE LECTURE
Dr Patricia Allmer (Edinburgh College of Art), “Temple of Sight” – British Surrealism and the Crystal Skull
Followed by a panel discussion and Q&A
Eleanor Clayton, Dr Patricia Allmer (Chair: Dr Rachel Stratton)
