GoMA is the exclusive Australian venue for ‘Surrealism: The Poetry of Dreams’, a landmark exhibition of surrealist works direct from the Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris.

The Musée national d’art moderne, housed in Paris’s iconic Centre Pompidou, is one of the world’s best museum collections of modern and contemporary art. Its Surrealism collections are the finest in Europe — and the core of this collection is coming to GoMA. This exhibition presents more than 180 works by 56 artists, including paintings, sculptures, ‘surrealist objects’, films, photographs, drawings and collages. ‘Surrealism: The Poetry of Dreams’ is an opportunity to see important art works that rarely leave Paris, in an exhibition that will provide a fascinating and comprehensive overview of this important artistic movement.

The exhibition presents a historical overview of Surrealism, charting its evolution from Dada experiments in painting, photography and film, through the metaphysical questioning and exploration of the subconscious in the paintings of Giorgio De Chirico and Max Ernst; to the readymade objects of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray’s photographs.

Third Drawer Down developed a range of products for the Surrealism exhibition that was inspired by Surrealist artists. The range included Surrealism-inspired tea towel, mug, badge featuring the text ‘this is not a tea towel/badge/mug’ in French, a play on Magritte’s famous Pipe artwork, a surrealist inspired mobile, tote bag, and eyeball keyring and mug and moustache and lip lollipops.