Leonora Carrington: Avatars & Alliances

Marking 50 years since the English translation of ‘The Hearing Trumpet’, Leonora Carrington’s 1974 novel, was published, this exhibition offers a fresh exploration of her extraordinary life, career and travels.

What to expect

Featuring over 50 artworks and objects by the British-Mexican artist, and by the artistic friends she made through her travels, as well as artefacts from museums, explore an exciting blend of rare paintings, drawings and prints depicting dream-like and nightmarish images where enchanting characters and creatures come alive in a magical and symbolic dreamscape.

Discover a fascinating array of objects – from Mayan, Mexican, and Roman cultural artifacts to witchcraft relics from East Anglia – that inspired Leonora’s complex and imaginative world.

Discover a new perspective

Avatars & Alliances sheds a new light on her art by exploring its complexity and diversity through a neurodivergent perspective, going beyond conventional interpretations.

Family Activities in this exhibition

Families will also have opportunities to bring their own surrealist creations to life, displaying them alongside the extraordinary works of Leonora Carrington and other major artists.

Featuring artists

Avatars & Alliances also showcases Jessie Makinson, a contemporary artist of Leonora Carrington. Her large paintings show dreamy, fairy tale-like scenes in dramatic settings. Jessie mixes science fiction and folklore, creating hybrid creatures that are part human, part animal. These characters take over colourful landscapes, inviting us to rethink our ideas about fantasy and power.

Click here to find out more about Jessie Makinson

There will also be a display of works by artists who knew Leonora, such as American fashion model turned photographer Lee Miller, Argentinian-born Leonor Fini, English artist and Surrealist advocate Roland Penrose, and her former partner, surrealist painter of the movement, Max Ernst.

*Image Credits: Leonora Carrington, The Night of the 8th, 1987, © Estate of Leonora Carrington / ARS, NY and DACS, London 2024. Image courtesy of The Roland Penrose Collection, Lee Miller Archives, England 2024. All rights reserved.