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Tate Liverpool + RIBA North Exhibition

Alice in Wonderland

4 November 2011 – 29 January 2012
Alice in Wonderland Exhibition banner

Lewis Carroll’s timeless novels, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, have fascinated children and adults alike since their publication over 150 years ago. Alice in Wonderland at Tate Liverpool is the first exhibition of its kind to explore how Lewis Carroll’s stories have influenced the visual arts, inspiring generations of artists. The exhibition will provide insight into the creation of the novels and the inspiration they have provided for artists through the decades.

The starting point for the exhibition is Carroll’s original manuscript, written in 1864 as a present for ten year old Alice Liddell. Carroll’s own illustrations ensured that images were central to the story, creating a visual world which took on a life of its own.

Alice in Wonderland will offer visitors a rare opportunity to view Carroll’s own drawings and photographs, alongside Victorian Alice memorabilia and John Tenniel’s preliminary drawings for the first edition of the novel.

Carroll’s stories were soon adopted by other artists. Surrealist artists from the 1930s onwards were drawn towards the fantastical world of Wonderland where natural laws were suspended. From the 1960s through the 1970s, Carroll’s Alice tales also prompted conceptual artists to explore language and its relationship to perception, and the stories inspired further responses in Pop and Psychedelic art. Expect to see works by artists ranging from Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, to Peter Blake and Yayoi Kusama.

Alice in Wonderland will also showcase an exciting selection of contemporary art, demonstrating the continuing artistic relevance of Carroll's novels. Works by Anna Gaskell, Annelies Strba and Torsten Lauschmann will all appear, exploring ideas such as the journey from childhood to adulthood; language, meaning and nonsense; scale and perspective; and perception and reality.

There are five art works in the contemporary sections of the exhibition that are not suitable for children. These works have relevant signs in place and Family visitors and School groups can ask a member of staff for more information.

Tate Liverpool + RIBA North

Mann Island
Liverpool L3 1BP
Plan your visit

Dates

4 November 2011 – 29 January 2012

In partnership with

Liverpool and Sefton Health Partnership Limited

Liverpool and Sefton Health Partnership Limited

Find out more

  • Charles Dodgson sketch for The Pool of Tears for Alice Adventures in Wonderland

    Curiouser and curiouser

    Marina Warner

    When Charles Dodgson – more widely known as Lewis Carroll – made drawings in the early 1960s for his book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, he was disappointed with the results. He employed cartoonist John Tenniel to create the now-famous illustrations, while his original ideas were consigned to the archive of Christ Church College, Oxford, where he worked as a lecturer in mathematics until his death in 1898. TATE ETC. sent a cultural historian to view Dodgson’s rarely seen drawings which feature in Tate Liverpool’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ exhibition

  • John Tenniel notes on his illustration of Alice with Tweedledum and Tweedledee

    When I use a word... it means just what I choose it to mean

    Sam Thorne

    Lewis Carroll demonstrated how inventive one could be with words and their meanings. Since the 1960s artists such as Mel Bochner, Bruce Nauman and later Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster have continued to explore the open-ended ambiguities of text

  • Artist

    Peter Blake

    born 1932
  • Artist

    Yayoi Kusama

    born 1929
  • Artist

    René Magritte

    1898–1967
  • Artist

    Salvador Dalí

    1904–1989
Artwork
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