How British is British Surrealism, 1936-2026?

This panel invites analysis of the histories of British Surrealism between its arrival on British shores as marked by the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London and its recent mapping on the national and international stage in centenary exhibitions of Surrealism in 2024-2026. The first generation of British Surrealists were largely presented as the heirs to the English Romantics, and/or as following in the black humour of Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll. Women surrealists, including Eileen Agar, Leonora Carrington, Ithell Colquhoun and Edith Rimmington, turned to the British landscape and Celtic folklore for their Surrealist magic and occultism. And today a diverse group of practitioners – including Yasmina Atta, Linder, Yinka Shonibare, Penny Slinger, and Marianna Simnett – cite Surrealism in their exploration of the absurd, the colonial, the sexually taboo and the fairytale.

Is there a particular Britishness at work across these aesthetic interests over the past century? Is the label ‘British Surrealism’ useful today?

Papers that situate individual or group case studies within a wider critique of concepts of Britishness, the politics of place and exhibition display, and/or the global turn for Surrealism Studies, are especially welcome. 

Submit your Paper via this form. Please download, complete and send it directly to the Session Convenor(s) below by Sunday 2 November 2025:

Professor Alyce Mahon, University of Cambridge,am414@cam.ac.uk