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ONLINE SYMPOSIUM

The Surreal Body
as Theatre of the Mind:

Women, Surrealism and Contemporary Visual Culture

Wednesday 30 September &
Thursday 1 October 2026

Free registration 

About

This two-day online symposium features research and reflections by Australian and international presenters on the legacy of surrealism in contemporary visual culture. Speakers particularly foreground how women creatives, working across image-based practices, mobilise surrealist-inflected, body-focused strategies to articulate female and queer subjectivities, embodied experience, and alternative modes of seeing, feeling, and being in the world.

Day 1 Wednesday 30 September 4:00-11:00 pm AEDT (UTC+10)

4:10-6:15 pm | Panel 1
Fragmented Bodies, Mediated Images: Surrealism in Film and Collage  

6:30-7:30 pm | Artists Roundtable
Jaime Tsai in conversation with artist Tara Marynowsky (Aus), and Mimi Kelly with Jane Burton (Aus) on the influence of Surrealism on their artworks.

7:45-9:15 pm | Panel 2
The Commodification of the Body: Surrealism, Fashion, and Visual Culture

9:30-11:00 pm | Panel 3
Monstrous-Feminine and Sculptural Bodies

Day 2 Thursday 1 October 4:00-10:30 pm AEDT (UTC+10)

4:10-5:45 pm | Panel 4
Ecologies of the Surreal Body: Hybridity, Care, and More-than-Human Relations

 

6:00-7:00 pm | Keynote Address

Associate Professor Victoria Carruthers | Australian Catholic University, Australia

“The Haunted House as Theatre of The Mind: The Unravelling Self in the Horror Films Relic (2020) and Hereditary (2018)”

 

7:15-8:45 pm | Panel 5
Bodies of Resistance: Dissidence, Gender, and Political Surrealism  

                 

9:00-10:30 pm | Panel 6
Digital Dreams and Surreal Bodies           

Keynote & Artist Guests

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Associate Professor, Art History and Theory, Australian Catholic University, Australia. Carruthers' research on surrealism includes her book Dorothea Tanning: Transformations, Lund Humphries, 2020.

Marynowsky works across the media of painting, drawing, and film and incorporates found images into her practice. Her work investigates recorded images and the historical representation of women. 

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Burton is an artist working with photography, film, and painting. Her work explores memory, longing, mortality and desire and is often darkly ambiguous
and enigmatic.

Full Symposium Program

View the complete list of speakers, presentation abstracts, bios, and session details for both days of the symposium.

Download a handly summary of the symposium timeline and panel session times. 

Register Now

Registration is free, and all are welcome to attend.
Zoom links for Day 1 and Day 2 will be emailed to those registered
in the week prior to the Symposium.

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