A Surrealist Odyssey is an extensive survey exhibition of Edward Bullmore, considered to be one of New Zealand’s earliest Surrealist visual artists.

Surrealism is a visual ‘stream of consciousness’ where the real world is filtered through the artist’s subconscious, manifesting into images that are often ambiguous and have different interpretations for viewers.

Largely a Western European style, Surrealism has never been widely accepted in New Zealand, although it was in Australia.

Bullmore challenged the constraints of the New Zealand’s predominately nationalist art canon of the time, with his Surrealist fusion of the New Zealand landscape and the human form, and it was not until he traveled to Europe and England that he achieved success as an artist.

Bullmore taught to support his art career.

His first teaching post was in Tauranga Boys' College in the late 1950s, during which time he held his first solo exhibition as guest artist of the Tauranga Art Society.

Many of the works from this exhibition have since remained in local collections and are included in A Surrealist Odyssey.