LEEDS SURREALIST GROUP will have a Surrealist Editions table at this year’s International Contemporary Artists’ Book Fair on Saturday 7th & Sunday 8th March at The Tetley, Hunslet Road, Leeds, with a launch event from 6pm on Friday, 6th March.
For further information: www.leedsartbookfair.com and thetetley.org
Leeds Surrealist Group will be participating in an international exhibition organized by La Liaison Surréaliste à Montréal at Gallerie Espace, 4844 Boul. Saint-Laurent, Montréal, Quebec, running from 5th to 17th June 2014.
Further information can be found here Surréalisme Montréal.
“How can even the most powerful kaleidoscope reflect all the shimmerings that are enameled upon the multicoloured flesh of these vast lands that desire reveals to us? And from the core of this fire we’ll be able to melt under the magnetic characteristics of its inflorescence? It is carried by the mark of its teeth, and by the pressure of its lips, that we will feverishly abandon ourselves to its vertigo; but how could we preserve such an enchantment, while Reason wastes its energy in eating away at any real life force, making us abandon what makes each individual a wholly unique being, capable of evoking the voluptuous aims of Love and Liberty?!”
- from the introductory text to the exhibition catalogue
LEEDS SURREALIST GROUP will have a Surrealist Editions table at this year’s International Contemporary Artists’ Book Fair on Saturday 8th & Sunday 9th March at The Tetley, Hunslet Road, Leeds, with a launch event from 6pm on Friday, 7th March.
For further information: www.leedsartbookfair.com and thetetley.org
With contributions from members of Leeds Surrealist Group, What Will Be, a 528-page almanac of the international surrealist movement is now available from Lulu here.
Published by Brumes Blondes in the Netherlands and edited by Her De Vries and Laurens Vancrevel, it contains essays, poems, texts & images, from over 170 contributors from 25 countries, in English, French & Spanish, as well as a chronology of the last 50 years of surrealism, 1964-2014.
We are not artists and have no interest in art markets or in the art-world career paths that are often, in their miserable conformism and conservatism, barely distinguishable from those of accountants, solicitors, managers, entrepreneurs, etc., and their self-promotional social networking, their competitiveness, their curricula vitae. Neither do we have any trust in so-called ‘politically engaged art’, nor its twin, ‘anti-art’ (sometimes masquerading as ‘post-art’), which, despite the pseudo-theoretical objections of its hapless practitioners, has no less a symbiotic relationship with the political and economic élite as its more openly capitalist counter-part.
However, individually and collectively, we create things (and situations) that sometimes very closely resemble ‘art works’ to the point that they converge and might even be considered as such. Indeed, taking into account the risk of mistaken identities, and accusations of flagrant self-contradiction, we are nonetheless prepared to make use of art galleries and exhibitions whenever it suits our purposes of communicating surrealist evidence. We remain indifferent as to whether what we produce (more often than not by-products of a surrealist activity or investigation) is considered as ‘art’ or not; this is really of no concern to us – philosophically, aesthetically, morally, or otherwise – and we feel no requirement to provide any justification, explanation or contextualisation.
LEEDS SURREALIST GROUP
Gareth Brown, Kenneth Cox, Jan Drabble, Bill Howe, Josie Malinowski, Sarah Metcalf, Peter Overton, Mike Peters, Martin Trippett
30th April 2013
In the build up to the invasion of Iraq, on the back of outrageous lies about weapons of mass destruction, we were promised shock and awe, to be followed by the liberation of a people. In the end, we got the London bombings, Wootton Bassett and the proliferation of jingoist militarism, and, above all else, the unimaginable numbers of Iraqi dead, wounded and displaced.
On the day that Iraq was invaded – Thursday, 20th March, 2003 – together with thousands of others, we walked out of our workplaces in protest and took to the streets of our city.
For a very brief moment we felt the certainty of our collective convictions, permitting us to step outside ourselves, discard our ordinary lives, and turn the world upside down. We marched to lose the feeling of powerlessness and out of a conviction that the only course of action left was dissent.
As the obfuscation from the corporate media is perpetuated in what laughably passes for analysis in their ‘ten years on’ retrospectives, we thought it timely to reprint a short text of ours from that time.
There is no satisfaction in being able to say, ‘We told you so.’ Read the rest of this entry »
LEEDS SURREALIST GROUP will have a Surrealist Editions table at this year’s International Contemporary Artists’ Book Fair on Friday 8th & Saturday 9th March in The Parkinson Court, Leeds University.
For further information: www.leedsartbookfair.com
A selection of elusive and rarely-seen short films presented with introductory talks by Leeds Surrealist Group.
featuring L’Invention du monde and other short films by Michel Zimbacca from the forthcoming English DVD release by Choses Vues
at the Star & Shadow Cinema in Newcastle Upon Tyne at 7:30pm on Thursday, 18th October 2012
LEEDS SURREALIST GROUP will have a Surrealist Editions table at this year’s Manchester Artists’ Book Fair on Friday 12th & Saturday 13th October in The Holden Gallery, Manchester School of Art, Cavendish Street, All Saints, Manchester. M15 6BR.
For further information: www.hotbedpress.org
LEEDS SURREALIST GROUP will have a stall at the Sheffield Anarchist Bookfair on Saturday, 23rd June – with Surrealist Editions titles, plus Phosphor and Manticore available.
Further information on the bookfair can be found at Sheffield Anarchist Bookfair
