Forbidden Territories: 100 Years of Surreal Landscape

Exhibition at Hepworth Wakefield, 23 November 2024 - 21 April 2025

From its origins in 1924 with the publication of the ‘Manifesto of Surrealism’ by poet and critic André Breton, Surrealism has become one of the most influential artistic, intellectual and literary movements of the twentieth century and continues to inspire artists today.

This exhibition catalogue takes visitors on a journey through the fantastical terrain of Surrealism over more than 100 years, examining how Surrealist ideas can transform landscape into a metaphor for the unconscious, merge the corporeal and the botanical, and provide ways of expressing the political anxieties, constraints and freedoms associated with gender.

Transhistorical thematic groupings of artworks bring together artists from Breton's circle of 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, as well as contemporary artists working within the legacy of Surrealism such as Shuvinai Ashoona, Stefanie Heinze, Helen Marten, Nicolas Party, and Wael Shawky.