Surrealism has arrived on the streets of Solihull. A new public realm exhibition, which I have curated, is celebrating the borough’s links to this strangest of modern art movements that saw artists and writers take inspiration from their dreams, thoughts, and nightmares, too.
There’s undoubtedly a nightmarish feel to Paul Newman’s mixed media painting ‘Rumination Beetle in Mell Square’, which sees a monster scaling the walls of the town’s shopping centre. Nostalgia plays a part in this fantastical scene by an artist who grew up in Solihull and continues to draw on his early love of movie monsters.
Meanwhile, Paul Lemmon’s pixelated painting features mythical animals, aquatic creatures, birds, human figures and faces. As he says, “this artwork depicts the subconscious as an oceanic force of fantasy, acting as a tribute to Emmy Bridgwater’s creative mind. The title is adapted from her 1942 surrealist poem, Storm Trip”.
He’s one of 29 commissioned artists who have created bold new work in the spirit of Bridgwater, a great but overlooked Surrealist who once called the borough home. At the end of her successful career and life, she was cutting and pasting subversive collages from a care home in Solihull.
Decades earlier, in 1936, Bridgwater attended The International Surrealist Exhibition in London. Here, she watched Salvador Dalí deliver a lecture while wearing a full deep-sea diving suit, and Sheila Legge strut through the show dressed as The Phantom of Sex Appeal, carrying a prosthetic leg.
Impacted by this dramatic arrival of Surrealism in Britain, the 30-year-old artist and poet referred to it as “quite a revelation”. Returning to the West Midlands, she co-founded the Birmingham Surrealists with fellow artists Conroy Maddox and John Melville, and the writer Robert Melville, who were later joined by Oscar Mellor and Desmond Morris.
Alongside her male counterparts, and throughout the 1930s and 40s, Bridgwater invoked the Surrealist principle of juxtaposing unusual objects to reveal uncanny narratives; in her lyrical paintings and ink drawings viewers are invited into interior worlds, defined by a symbolic language of birds, eggs and organic forms.
These same symbols appear in many of the newly commissioned works, including Helen Grundy’s colourful digital collage, ‘Bird Land’. The late Surrealist herself appears part human, part bird, adorned with beautiful plumage and surrounded by a number of ‘hatchlings’, which represent modern artists who are inspired by Bridgwater today.
Michele Harris also references Bridgwater’s bird imagery in her exquisite drawing: acentral fleur de lis motif morphs into a bird box with roots; this is a symbol of home while referring to Solihull’s floral coat of arms. Flying back are hybrid creatures made from feathers, branches and oak leaves, while the work’s title ‘Return’ spotlights Bridgwater, whose contributions to art history have been largely erased.
In fact, Bridgwater is among several women artists who are finally emerging from the shadows of the movement’s more famous men. Her ‘return’ to historical narratives and rediscovery is real cause for celebration, as Solihull’s own Stewart Lee has commented.
“Until now, the pioneering female surrealists of the mid-20th Century were mainly regarded by writers and critics as the compliant muses of their male counterparts, but the dam has finally broken this year as both the London and Cornwall Tates stage a massive retrospective of the Anglo-Irish surrealist Ithell Colquhoun.
But we have our own cult in waiting, as Colquhoun’s contemporary and rival Emmy Bridgwater hailed from Solihull. I suspect, when she retired to the then new Monkspath Estate, the teenage me may even have delivered Emmy’s Solihull Times newspaper in the 1980s.
Bridgwater’s marvellous Night Work Is About To Commenced remains out of sight in the ongoing great Birmingham Art Gallery lockdown, so maybe this outdoor exhibition in Solihull can be the starting point for a long overdue push for wider recognition for our Emmy. A Mell Square commemorative memorial must only be months away! Add a blue plaque for the original line-up of Napalm Death and Solihull’s two great contributions to 20th Century culture will finally be recognised.”
Having recently presented The Bohemians of Balsall Heath for BBC Radio 4, Stewart Lee knows the story of Birmingham’s surrealists all too well. He also recognises, among other reasons, one specific problem as to why Bridgwater has been ignored for so long:
“It’s not in the Midland mentality to boast – that’s why people love and trust us – but Solihull’s Emmy Bridgwater is a surrealist happening waiting to surreally happen!”
I have curated Surreal Solihull with the intention that the West Midlands will shout a little louder about Emmy Bridgwater and our significant art history, while also celebrating local creative talent – there’s so much of it about, and for the next few months it’s displayed pride of place on Solihull High Street.
Free to visit, ‘Surreal Solihull’ will take place until 31 May 2025 on Solihull High Street and in a pop-up gallery inside Touchwood: solihull.gov.uk/surreal-solihull
