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Peltz Gallery exhibition explores warfare

Art installation explores representations of ‘inhumane’ vs ‘heroic’ warfare

Representations of the ‘terrorist’ as an ‘inhumane insurgent’ will be explored in a new exhibition at the Peltz Gallery at Birkbeck School of Arts.

Artist’s Impression: Mangled Metal, which runs at the Gallery on 43 Gordon Square from July 4 to August 14, is a result of the Peltz’s artist-in-residence programme which, in its inaugural year, has been carried out in collaboration with Bow Arts.

Artist John Timberlake, of Bow Arts, and Dr Gabriel Koureas, senior lecturer in the Department of History of Art at Birkbeck, have joined forces to devise the exhibition, which reflects on the use of mangled metal as an exhibitionary strategy by museums of war in representations of Britain’s ‘small wars’ from 1945 to the present day, and the War on Terror.

John Timberlake’s installation explores the transformation in the life of metal from material object (car, plane, building etc.) to photographic index, to relic, to drawing, to paper object, and finally to installation.

To achieve this, the gallery space will be transformed into a reliquary, with sculptural fragments reimagined as objects of veneration. With the objects laid out on the floor, the installation aims to echo the forensic display and assembling of evidence, while simultaneously drawing on the act of painting in the context of staging, model making, sculpture and installation.

John explained that the exhibition explores German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s notion of art-objects as simultaneously “fragments of culture and fragments of barbarism”.

He said: “Echoing the ostraka - broken fragments of ancient pottery - of Ancient Greece, the installation will avoid the prioritisation of figure/ground relations and instead construct a field of unique but equal elements thus challenging established hierarchies of conflict and complicating such simplistic concepts as  ‘justifiable political act’ versus ‘the atrocity’.”

The Peltz Gallery’s artist in residence programme connects artists with academics to create new work inspired by the interdisciplinary research produced within Birkbeck’s School of the Arts. The residency aims to explore how artistic engagement with academic research might simultaneously develop reflective arts practices and advance academic thinking.

Speaking about the exhibition, Dr Gabriel Koureas said: “The specimen of mangled metal, the fragment of wreckage, frequently becomes an exhibitionary trope, establishing the inhumanity of the insurgent in contrast to the artefacts such as tanks, artillery, rifles or aircraft that are often chosen to represent humane and heroic wars.

The dialogue that takes place between the shining, smooth surfaces of the machinery of war and the rough surfaces of mangled metal is one between justifiable and unjustifiable war, good and evil, heroes and villains.”

Artist’s Impression: Mangled Metal, runs at the Peltz Gallery, 43 Gordon Square, from Saturday, July 4 to Friday, August 14. Opening times are Mondays to Fridays, 10am-8pm, and Saturdays, 10am-5pm

Read John Timberlake's blog article on the genesis of the exhibition here.

The events programme surrounding the exhibition also includes:

  • 3 July: Remembering Small Wars: roundtable with veterans, artists and curators. Rm G01, 43 Gordon Square, 3.30pm - 5.30pm / Private View, 6pm – 8.30pm
    Participants: Alan Wakefield, Head of photographs section, Imperial War Museum London; Rebecca Newell, Public Information and Outreach Curator, National Army Museum;Peter Cosgrove, Veteran of Afghanistan War;John Timberlake, Artist in Residence, Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck; Chaired by Dr. Gabriel  Koureas, Senior Lecturer, Department of History of Art, Birkbeck.
  • 7 July: Commemorating 7/7: artists, architects and academics in conversation. Birkbeck Cinema, 6pm - 8pm
    Participants: Philip Nelson, Chair of the Tavistock Square 7/7Memorial Trust; John Timberlake, Artist in Residence, Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck; Dr. Gabriel  Koureas, Senior Lecturer, Department of History of Art, Birkbeck; Chaired by Prof. Annie E. Coombes, Director Peltz Gallery, Birkbeck
  • 8 July: John Timberlake and Gabriel Koureas in conversation at Bow Arts, Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, London, E3 2SJ, 6pm-8pm. Chaired by Elizabeth Murton, Artist, Bow Arts

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