Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War, Imperial War Museum, October 2013 – February 2014

IWM North
Saturday 12 October 2013 – Sunday 23 February 2014

Wars During My Lifetime

How do artists contribute to our perceptions of war and conflict in an age where our understanding is shaped by the media and the internet?

This autumn, in Manchester, IWM presents its first major exhibition of its national collection of contemporary art produced since the First Gulf War.

IWM holds an unrivalled collection of twentieth and twenty-first century British art, including some of the most significant artists exploring war and conflict today.

Explore the ways in which art can prompt us to think more deeply about current events, their immediate impact and their long-term implications. Hear from the artists themselves and discover what motivates people to create art about conflict.

Featuring many new and recent acquisitions, Catalyst features over 70 works from this national collection on public display together for the first time. Explore photography, film, sculpture, oil paintings, prints and book works ranging from the highly moving to the humorous, philosophical or outraged.

The exhibition includes work by Steve McQueen, kennardphillipps, Langlands & Bell, Miroslaw Balka, Willie Doherty, Martin John Callanan, Paul Seawright, Ori Gersht, Jananne Al Ani and Edmund Clark.

Admission free
More info
Download the catalogue (PDF)

Wars During My Lifetime 1982-2012
Callanan is an artist with an ongoing interest in the individual’s place within wider systems. In this newspaper he lists, in order, all the wars that have taken place during his lifetime. Since making this work he has made additional editions of the work with updated lists including subsequent conflicts. Through this simple gesture he reinstates the place of the individual within the broader sweep of history, using his own lifetime as a unit with which to measure historical events. On reading the list, some of the conflicts are immediately recognisable, while others have largely passed under the Western media’s radar.

As part of the exhibition, a Town Crier proclaimed Wars During My Lifetime in and around the Museum on 13 October 2013, here is a full audio recording:

Wars During My Lifetime, Town Crier