Pubilc Talks & Published Texts
Weir’s Writings on the “Simulacra of Surrealism”
The term “simulacra” refers to a “copy” or a “likeness” where an art object, like a marble sculpture of a face for example, captures an exact likeness but also something profoundly different about it so that the marble itself becomes estranged. In surrealism, the “simulacra” also refers to the copy of the world that we keep inside ourselves, and that we inhabit when we dream and when we imagine.
Art Lecture:
Surrealism’s Slippery Surface
Join Surrealism scholar Simon Weir for an engaging exploration of Surrealism’s profound philosophical and psychological dimensions. We’ll trace how André Breton, Salvador Dalí, and especially René Magritte advanced automatism from its roots in spiritualism to a powerful means of accessing the unconscious, shifting from physical techniques like automatic writing toward deeper psychological insights that could be communicated through text, image, object, cinema and architecture.
https://mosmanartgallery.org.au/event/art-lecture/
Art Appreciation Lecture
Salvador Dalí: painting the unconscious
Discover how Salvador Dalí transformed the unconscious into art. Dalí’s extraordinary technique turned dreams, phantoms, and irrational objects into luminous visions. Drawing on his own writings, including 50 Secrets of Magical Craftsmanship, this lecture reveals how Dalí fused reason with delusion, and observation with invention, to make visible the mechanics of thought itself.
Art Gallery of NSW
Wednesday 17 June 2026, 6–7pm
Thursday 18 June 2026, 1–2pm
Tickets on AGNSW Websise
Learning Curve Lectures
René Magritte: The Treachery of Images
The Art Gallery of NSW, November 2024.
Sold Out
Listen:
Interview about Learning Curve Lecture Series on East Side Radio, 1 November 2024.
The Art Gallery of NSW Members Instagram post of a snippet of the talk.
This is Not a Surrealism
- A Manifesto for and against the Simulacra of Surrealism
Sydney: Apothecary Archive Publishing, 2024.
A$25 + Postage
Listen:
Interview about This is not a Surrealism on East Side Radio, 1 November 2024.
Published Response to André Breton
André Breton, Magic Art (Special Edition),
André Breton, Magic Art (Deluxe Edition),
London: Fulgur Press, 2024.
£425, £150 + Postage
In 1953, Breton asked thrity two surrealists and authors - from Heidegger to Magritte - a series of questions about magic and art, and published them in Magic Art. For the 2024 edition, thirty two contemporary surrealists and authors - including Weir - provided new answers to those same questions. Available in Magic Art Redux, in the Deluxe and Special Editions of Magic Art.
Research Article
Dalí, S.,Weir, S. (2025) “Salvador Dalí at MoMA’s 1958 Gaudí Symposium”
International Journal of Surrealism, 3(1), 138-142. [link]
US$19 (PDF)
Research Article
Weir, S. (2022) “Salvador Dalí in Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York”
Journal of Architceture, 27(2-3), 398-419. [link]
US$63 (PDF)