Taking its title from an experimental drawing by Barry Flanagan, Seeing Round Corners was the first major exhibition in the UK to explore the centrality of the circle, the circular and the cyclical in art and included works of almost all media. It attracted more than 150,000 visitors. The exhibition featured more than 130 items – dating from 3000BC to the present day – and considered the ways in which artists have gravitated to this universal and recurring form, exploring its significance and symbolism in art and culture; astronomy and geometry; spirituality and everyday life. The exhibition showed significant international contemporary artworks alongside historical objects from a range of cultures and philosophies. It included works by: Leonardo da Vinci, Paul Nash, Barbara Hepworth, Carl Andre, William Blake, Hannah Collins, Christian Marclay, Runa Islam, JMW Turner, Theaster Gates, Rebecca Horn, David Hammons, Sonia Delauney, Patrick Heron, Richard Long, Nancy Holt, David Batchelor, Gabriel Orozco and Bridget Riley.

Praise for Seeing Round Corners:

‘This is the most stimulating and compelling exhibition...the

circle is surely the most potent of all natural symbols...the

ideal theme for a show as well curated as this.’

  Laura Cumming, The Observer

‘This intriguing exhibition convinces from the outset...as I

emerged from the gallery I had different sense of the world’

  Mark Hudson, The Telegraph

‘It’s incredibly stimulating...something which you get very

absorbed in and it relates to the mystery of the universe...

it’s quite cosmic’

  Richard Cork, Front Row, Radio 4 (at 11:14)

‘Wonderful and very cleverly arranged...it does make you look slightly

differently at the world outside...a really stimulating well-chosen show’

  Saturday Review, Radio 4 (at 27:33)

Seeing Round Corners

21 May – 25 September 2016

Turner Contemporary

conceived and co-curated

by Jonathan Parsons and David Ward