Journeys with 'The Waste Land'

Journeys with 'The Waste Land' is a major exhibition exploring the significance of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land through the visual arts.

In 1921, T.S. Eliot spent a few weeks in Margate at a crucial moment in his career. He arrived in a fragile state, physically and mentally, and worked on The Waste Land sitting in the Nayland Rock shelter on Margate Sands. The poem was published the following year, and proved to be a pivotal and influential modernist work, reflecting on the fractured world in the aftermath of the First World War as well as Eliot’s own personal crisis.

Presenting over 60 artists, and almost 100 objects, the exhibition includes works by Fiona Banner, Cecil Collins, Tacita Dean, Elisabeth Frink, Patrick Heron, Edward Hopper, Barbara Kruger, Helen Marten, Henry Moore, Paul Nash, Paula Rego, John Smith and JMW Turner. The exhibition explores how contemporary and historical art can enable us to reflect on the poem’s shifting flow of diverse voices, references, characters and places.

The exhibition is the culmination of a three year project designed to develop a pioneering approach to curating. Local residents, coming together as the Waste land Research Group, have developed the entire exhibition. Journeys with 'The Waste Land' is consequently the result of many months the group have spent discussing personal connections between art, poetry and life.

Visit the Turner Contemporary exhibition site here.