24 pages (including wraps) – A5 format – colour – June 2021
on the theme of THE MISSING STATUE
Price including postage & packing
UK £4.50 * Europe £5.50 * USA & Rest of the World £6.50
Available now from our Surrealist Editions website
Peter Overton, Even To Fall Upon Men, collage, 2021
Peter Overton of Leeds Surrealist Group is participating in an online exhibition of collage, Surrealist Collage International 2021, which has opened 8th May and runs until 8th June at the virtual Secret Room Gallery.
24 pages (including wraps) – A5 format – colour – March 2021
Texts, poems, images, collective games including
A Promenade in New Leeds by Night – an imaginary walk taken in a city suburb
El Danzante – a game of visual interpretation
Cumbersome Repellent – a collective poem
Fragments from Nine Puzzle-Poems
El Tío de la Mina & Kari Kari – examples from games of visual interpretation
The Bars of Orion – a film review
Price including postage & packing
UK £4.00 * Europe £5.00 * USA & Rest of the World £6.00
Available now from our Surrealist Editions website
Members of Leeds Surrealist Group are participating in the exhibition ‘La Photographie surréaliste dans le monde en 2021’, organised by the Paris Surrealist Group, at the Espace André Breton, located in the Rignault Museum (which adjoins the Maison André Breton), Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. The opening will be held at 3pm on Saturday, 20th March and will include readings and a talk, further details can be found here.
24 pages (including wraps) – A5 format – colour – October 2020
Texts, poems, images, collective games including:
The Last Meeting Before Lockdown – a collective drawing and text
A Promenade in New Leeds by Day – a description of an imaginary walk taken in a city suburb
A Trident – from a game of visual interpretation
Proposed Titles – a game of poetic appellations for an untitled drawing
The Dark-Lantern – a ‘puzzle-poem’ game using fragments of an old print
Dresden Silk – an essay on hypnagogic ‘verbal intrusions
Price including postage & packing:
UK £4.00 * Europe £5.00 * USA & Rest of the World £6.00
Members of Leeds Surrealist Group are participating in the exhibition ‘La Photographie surréaliste en 2020’, organised by the Paris Surrealist Group, at Amarrage, 88 rue des Rosiers, Saint Ouen.
In his review of The International Encyclopaedia of Surrealism, published in Infosurr no. 142, the art historian Michel Rémy describes our group’s activities as ‘assez erratique’.
If this were true, we would have absolutely no problem with such an epithet, given the trajectory of the surrealist adventure can be as erratic as life itself.
We have known M. Rémy, a specialist in ‘British Surrealism’, since having first encountered him in the late 1990s, so were somewhat surprised at his dismissive remark, without his firstly having researched or enquired about our activities.
Perhaps holding group meetings each week for over twenty-six years is considered as being neither a sufficiently surrealist activity nor one of sufficient regularity, and in M. Rémy’s view is thus ‘erratic’. Or is it that we are being assessed in terms of ‘productivity’ and found to be turning out insufficient quantities of ‘art’ or ‘literature’?
We will not list here the publications, games, events, exhibitions, etc. that we have been responsible for, nor those that we have contributed to, either as a group or individually. That would be tedious and, for those who have the curiosity to find out for themselves, could be established without much effort, particularly if one is a specialist in ‘British Surrealism’. Besides, we do not subscribe to current predilections for information overload, which are often taken to the point of flagrant exhibitionism.
What is visible of our group through our publications and exhibitions arises from a truly collective activity; it is, however, a necessarily partial and limited view, most of our activities being ‘occulted’ from the public gaze.
Given the context of M. Rémy’s remarks, which were made in consideration of ‘group’ activity, they inadvertently, but usefully foreground a confusion over what a surrealist group is and how it can be defined. There is an important distinction to be made between a surrealist group and an association of like-minded individuals who come together to put on an exhibition or publish some of their writing, whether on paper or on a screen, but have no true collective foundation as such.
Surrealism, as it manifests through the life of a group, is foremost a question of collective experience, which is by far its most important ‘product’.
Leeds Surrealist Group
Gareth Brown, Stephen J Clark, Kenneth Cox, Luke Dominey, Amalia Higham, Bill Howe, Sarah Metcalf, Peter Overton, Jonathan Tarry, Martin Trippett
24th July 2020
A pdf of the above statement can be dowloaded here: Assez Erratique?.
In November & December 1994 we organised a major season of films made by and admired by surrealists, with a number of films selected by the surrealist groups in Madrid, Paris, Prague & Stockholm. Given that the brochure for this is very difficult to get hold of, we have decided to make it available as a free download here: Surrealists Go To The Cinema 1994.
Given that Manticore No.2 has been out-of-print for some time and very difficult to get hold of, we have decided to make it available as a free download here:
The exhibition ‘Le Dessin surréaliste en 2019’, organised by the Paris Surrealist Group and in which members of Leeds Surrealist Group are participating, is now showing at La Maison André Breton, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie
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