Description
Object description
image: The upper portion of the page is filled by six vertical strips. Each shows a figure obscured by the grain of the
printing process. Three of the figures are black silhouettes on white and three are white against a black background. The lower portion of
the page is filled with black and contains a page of text from a newspaper, reversed out. Below this, along the bottom of the page, is a
line of white type with a fluorescent yellow cross on one side and a fluorescent red circle on the other.
text:'Iraq has found the mutilated bodies of more than 40 of its soldiers buried alive by US forces in the Gulf War near the Nassiriyah-
Basra highway, Baghdad radio said yesterday. The US defence department said in September that many Iraqi troops were buried alive in
trenches by tanks fitted with ploughblades in the final days of war. Modern World'
Physical description
3/5
same text as IWM ART 16960
similar images to IWM ART 16963
Label
From 1985 to 1995, Michael Peel made over 35 poster works under the generic title MODERN WORLD. The poster works were
part of a strategy to get art onto the street and reach a popular audience. They were shown simultaneously in galleries and fly posted on
billboards, street hoardings and lamp-posts. Peel selected words and images from newspapers and television, sometimes combined with his
own photographs, to make graphic allusions to power, politics, war and the media. The majority of the poster works were rapidly and
cheaply produced in a 30x40 inch format, screen-printed in black and white. Later series included a single colour - a deliberately crude,
luminous red, pink, yellow, green or blue - and were also printed on art paper in small limited editions. They were produced with the
financial assistance of local authorities and arts organisations in London, and distributed across the UK.
MODERN WORLD brings back vividly one of the most controversial eras of the last century – a period in British life dominated by Margaret
Thatcher and shaped by the Falklands War at one end and the first Gulf War at the other.
Inscription
'3/5. War Graves. Michael Peel'
Inscription
'1992'