Geographies of War

The North Lodge at UCL, Gower Street. 18-27 March 2013

An exhibition at University College London. Website link here

This exhibition explores how artists with diverse practices and perspectives experienced the invasion and occupation of Iraq and how they responded to it by engaging with questions of space, place, landscape and territory.

Bringing together artists from Iraq and Britain, it shows six works that give material form to the violence, anxiety and ruin of war but which also raise questions about resistance, resilience and dreams of peace. Opening in the week of the tenth anniversary of the invasion, the exhibition presents alternative perspectives on the conflict and challenges our ways of seeing war.

Review

In Trebuchet Magazine

Event
Beyond the Geographies of War: Exploring Art and Peace

UCL Department of Geography, Pearson Building, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT 11am-4pm,
27th March 2013

Introduction
Questions of geography – of space, place, home, environment, landscape and territory – are a recurring theme in the responses of artists to war. But how do they figure in the relationship between art and peace? How can we understand the role that spatial practices and spatial themes play in creating peace as well as in articulating resistance to war and violence? This workshop will explore these questions with reference to the Iraq war but also branch out to consider the relationship between geography, art and peace more broadly. With talks by artists Rashad Selim and Emily Johns and academic Bernadette Buckley (Goldsmiths, University of London), and touching on issues of oil, water and ecology as well as politics and war, the workshop provides an opportunity to reflect on how art, activism and critical spatial practices can inform one another.