Julian Trevelyan, R.A. 1910-1988

Having returned to London in 1936 and participated in the International Exhibition of Surrealism, Trevelyan joined the 'Mass Observation' team newly set up by his old Cambridge friend Humphrey Jennings alongside Tom Harrison and Charles Madge. This social research organisation, which aimed to create an 'anthropology of ourselves', recruited a team of paid observers to study the everyday life of ordinary people in Britain. One aspect of its initial investigation was to gauge the national feeling about the recent abdication of Edward VIII.

Trevelyan's collage work of this period frequently makes subtle reference to the current political situation by incorporating fragments of relevant newspaper articles. However, in the present work, the allusions to the Royal crisis could not be more explicit, with members of the Royal family consigned to the rubbish dump alongside pots and pans, cabbages and garden paraphernalia.

Trevelyan's Surrealist sensibilities naturally led him to support current debates about the importance of the Socialist art form. The modernity of the collage medium and its implicit repudiation of traditional painterly conventions appealed to Trevelyan as much as the myriad visual possibilities and witty associations presented by a suitcase full of newspaper fragments. Similarly the urban motifs inspired by Trevelyan's trip to Bolton with the Mass-Observation 'Worktown' project, in themselves dependable emblems for a Surrealist art form, here serve a purpose as the perfect ironic backdrop. Contrasting the powerful reality of the working class environment with the fragile fairy-tale existence of the disgraced royal family, Trevelyan not only succeeds in integrating Surrealist sentiment and method but also draws attention to the complex historical relationship between art and politics.