Output details

Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism

Allmer edited the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism, also conceived and curated by her. Both resulted from a research project, for which Allmer was Principal Investigator (2007-2009), a collaboration between the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design (MIRIAD) at Manchester Metropolitan University and Manchester City Art Gallery. The project’s major contribution to the field was its re-examination of the feminist history of Surrealism. In doing so it highlighted and explored artists previously omitted from or marginalised by the Surrealist canon, research on women surrealists having largely remained confined to a first, mainly French, generation of artists. The exhibition included 32 women Surrealist artists (from America, Britain, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Mexico, Spain and Switzerland) in order, as Allmer’s introductory essay to the catalogue makes clear, to investigate how their artistic practices respond to, develop, enrich and challenge some of the generic conventions of art history and how, in doing so, new lines of development and new counter-traditions are created. Research for the exhibition involved locating works in private and public collections and archives, and constructing theoretical approaches to this material. Allmer selected the catalogue contributions from internationally recognised scholars of Surrealism such as Professor Mary Ann Caws, Professor Katharine Conley, Professor Roger Cardinal and Dr Alyce Mahon.

To accompany the exhibition Allmer organised a lecture series at Manchester Art Gallery featuring major academics and art historians, and she co-curated a series of film showings with Cornerhouse as a means to place the material in a wider cultural context. The exhibition raised academic awareness of the lack of contemporary research on women surrealists, and is now the forerunner of a range of upcoming exhibitions on women Surrealists in venues such as LACMA, Los Angeles, and Pallant House, Chichester