A century of surrealism: Landscape at The Box, Plymouth

Raphael Roy Taylor

2024 marked the centenary of Breton’s Surrealist manifesto, which defined surrealism as a ‘pure psychic automatism… outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation’, expressing ‘the real functioning of thought’. The movement aimed to move expression beyond consciousness to discover an innate truth to humanity. I had the opportunity to speak with Terah Walkup, Art Curator at The Box, on this landmark touring exhibition, curated by Eleanor Clayton of the Hepworth Wakefield and travelling on to Arnhem in the Netherlands, aims to act both as a retrospective, pairing the most famous artists from the movement with those pushed aside, and as a showcase of contemporary art from those reimagining surrealism today.

 Leonora Carrington’s (1917-2011) El Bailarín (The Dancer), one of the artist’s final works, stands in the central hall, serving to “kick off the ideas of the exhibition”, since “her life and career spans from the original generation of surrealists” to the “contemporary generation of artists” utilising surrealist ideas and practices. That the main works by Carrington featuring in Forbidden Territories are from her final years, where arthritis effectively forced a transition from painting into sculpture, cements her as a living connection between the original surrealists and those of today.

c. The Box, Plymouth

The first work that visitors see upon reaching the exhibition galleries is Magritte’s La Condition Humaine, in which the viewer gazes out of the mouth of a cave, towards distant mountains. This view, however, is obstructed by an easel and canvas, which depicts the same mountains with a castle improbably perched. It’s the perfect start to detach the viewer from objective reality- whether or not the castle exists beyond the canvas is unknowable.

c. The Box, Plymouth

Often, with exhibitions showcasing work from contemporary artists, side by side with works from historical artists, it can feel like a false equivalence. Not here. In both of the larger galleries, what immediately takes focus is the patterned and ruched curtains by Aliyah Hussain, calling back to “some of the original display techniques of the time period". Work seems to be floating in the sea of fabric as if by magic. It adds a sense of “magic” to the historic Edwardian setting of the Box’s art galleries, which saw that style in its early years (as Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery). Wael Shawky’s twin bronze sculptures are both architectural and animalistic- crawling, spidery legs supporting a great citadel. Whilst “not intentional”, these works resonate with the Plymouth landscape for Walkup, the “rocky waterfront” leading to a structure very similar to Plymouth’s Citadel.

Wael Shawky and Dali, c. The Box, Plymouth

 They’re otherworldly and complement Dali’s unnerving Mountain Lake, painted in 1938, a febrile year with fascism on the rise. It features two crooks that a young Dali dreamed of in association with death, supporting a telephone with its cord cut, against the background of its title, slightly skewed and out of proportion. Shawky’s sculptures and Dali’s painting evoke the same emotions: a sense of otherworldliness and unease; neither of the works feels in the shadow of the other.

A significant effort has been made to elevate female artists, often overlooked in their time. For example, Mary Wykeham’s focus on spirituality and religious themes saw her cast out from Breton’s Surrealist group. Her inclusion side by side with Ernst, Magritte and Dali aims to not just to “fold women back into the story” but also to reevaluate surrealism as not purely a secular movement.

Ro Robertson, Interlude II, c. The Box, Plymouth

Another decision that feels more forward-thinking than performative was the creation of an entirely separate gallery space dedicated to “women and nonbinary artists”. At the centre of this is Ro Robertson’s series of 9 curved pieces of metal, Interlude II. These resemble waves and are deftly brushed with marine paint to give these industrial materials a “very watery, very flowy” impression, drawn from Robertson’s family background in St Ives shipbuilding. It’s remarkable to see marine paint, designed to withstand great force and the corrosion of seawater, be utilised in a way that tames and softens the great shards of metal.

By celebrating landscape, the exhibition gives greater focus not just to our natural landscape, but how it can be interpreted to undermine our certainties of the material world. In pushing underrepresented artists at the time, contemporary explorations of surrealism and some of the most famous names in the entire history of art, Forbidden Territories challenges our perceptions on a fundamental level.