IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund Commissions

In Somewhere to Stay, artist Diana Forster exhibits a series of laser cut aluminium panels telling the story of Anna, a young Polish refugee driven from her home during World War II, and her long search for ‘somewhere to stay’. You can read more about the project here. 

Kirkcaldy Galleries

4 February - 14 May 2023

University of St. Andrews Wardlaw Museum

25 May - 30 November 2023

In partnership with University of St. Andrews' Visualising War Project.

This exhibition will feature responses from six schools in south Wales to the tricky question of how to commemorate war and conflict. Working with the historian Dr Gethin Matthews and the artist Siôn Tomos Owen, the schoolchildren have created six new memorials in response to local war memorials in their area.

Their colourful and striking creations convey their feelings about historical loss and avoiding future conflicts. The exhibition invites reflection on the complex role of a memorial as both a commemorative tribute and cautionary tale. 

The Pierhead Welsh Parliament

27 June - 25 July 2023

Rhonda Heritage Park

31 July - 18 September 2023

In partnership with Swansea University.

Rakowitz’s exhibition has been conceived as a garden that will continue to grow and develop during its run. Alongside newly created artworks, the installation will present a collection of plants at different stages of their growing process. Born out of collaboration with people living in Gateshead and Newcastle with experience of forced displacement, Rakowitz’s ruined garden acts as a metaphor for the overlapping histories of displacement, war, oppression, trauma and adaptation, that people, cultural objects and plants carry with them.

The Waiting Gardens of the North is centred around a relief panel from the North Palace of Ashurbanipal (668–631 BCE) in Nineveh depicting the Assyrian gardens, believed to have preceded what is now known as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The original panel has been housed in the British Museum since 1856. The exhibition sees Rakowitz recreate this panel in a monumental scale, using his signature collage technique with food packaging, locally sourced from South Asian and African grocery stores.

An IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund major commission in Partnership with Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts. 

From 15 July 2023. Find out more here.

Artist Chila Kumari Singh Burman MBE has created a new commission for the outside of the Royal Pavilion. Exploring its role as a hospital for wounded Indian soldiers during the First World War, Chila’s colourful neon sculptures also draw on the spectacle of the Pavilion interiors, where Asian symbols and motifs intermingle with signs of British imperialism. Chila’s work often explores the cultural syntheses she experienced growing up in Britain.

Brighton Royal Pavilion 

11 November 2023 to 28 January 2024

Free

In partnership with Brighton and Hove Museums, with an associated community programme presented and developed in partnership with Believe in Me CIC.

A new body of work created with Glasgow-based artist Cathy Wilkes. The project will allow Wilkes an extended period of reflection on questions of war, conflict and violence. Wilkes' work encompasses both abstraction and intense social realism to convey themes of universal relevance: attachment, care, loss, separation, exposure, and revelation.

May 2024

A major commission in partnership with The Hunterian, Glasgow

In Out of this World, Heather Phillipson plots a sequence of sonic and atmospheric conditions that conjure
airspace, aerospace and outer space. Responding to the ghostly communications of radar, sonar and
unidentified aerial phenomena, Phillipson fills Glynn Vivian’s galleries with tuned, automated noises and
with dematerialised images that float and pulsate, creating what she calls ‘a visual and acoustic fog’. This
fog is, like warfare, hallucinatory – generating apparitions, premonitions and phantasmagoria. Through the
foregrounding of sound as a force that modulates physical and affective dynamics, Out of this World maps
out a vibratory field that acts almost meteorologically, working on the nervous system and activating
instinctive, visceral responses

June 2024 

A major commission in partnership with Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea

To be performed on HMS Unicorn’s own restored brass band instruments from the First World War, composer Michael Betteridge will create a new piece of collaborative community music to highlight the local, national and international significance of HMS Unicorn.

The commission will be based on the experience of Unicorn’s crew members who were sent to the Western Front, Gallipolli and the Balkans along with the very same instruments the piece will be performed on, to be premiered in Unicorn’s 200th anniversary year in 2024.

In partnership with The Unicorn Preservation Society

During the Second World War Southampton suffered heavily as waves of bombers delivered destruction from above, damaging or destroying 45,000 buildings. This project focuses on the rebuilding of the city by recording people's memories of post-war Southampton; the gaps in the street scene and the role of factories in repairing and rebuilding. 

In partnership with The Brickworks Museum in Burlesdon.

Inspired by neglected heritage of the British Caribbean in WW2, Cornwallis Cloth uses Black British storytelling and comedy to evoke a distant corner of the Battle of the Atlantic, and an epic struggle for Black civil rights - in the oldest part of Britain’s overseas Empire.

In partnership with Sweet Patootee Arts

Using the Falklands conflict as a starting point, The Box’s commission will explore the idea of home and what it means to come home during or after a time of war.

In partnership with The Box

The commissioned art will explore and facilitate greater engagement with under-represented voices of women within the Royal Air Force; sharing new stories of how conflict has impacted women’s lives and experiences. The commission will take inspiration from the pivotal - but underacknowledged - historic role of women within the RAF and WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force).

In partnership with Bentley Priory Museum

The Harris will commission an artist of Egyptian heritage to explore shared histories of conflict and connection that exist between Preston and Egypt. The starting point for this new artwork is a series of murals known as the ‘Egyptian Balcony’ commissioned by the Harris in 1908.

In partnership with The Harris Museum

Nerve Centre will collaborate with acclaimed activist and street artist Joe Caslin on a project exploring Northern Ireland’s future as it continues to emerge as a post-conflict society. Young people aged 18-25 from across Northern Ireland are being encouraged to take part in a collaborative process, to work with Joe and input their thoughts as they develop a major new piece of outdoor art.

Joe Caslin’s masterful, monochrome pencil sketch technique has seen his poignant work
brought to life on an unavoidable scale on public buildings across the island, enticing people to engage with issues such as cultural identity, same-sex marriage and mental health. Iconic buildings are used as a canvas to encourage a public discussion with biodegradable and environmentally friendly materials ensuring no lasting impact to the structures.

An exhibition on uprooting and relocation, exploring the forceful expulsion of the Chagossian community. A commission for a multidisciplinary artist to visually document and present textual analyses of their engagement with the Chagossian community in the UK and where possible, abroad.

In partnership with Ffotogallery 

Walking with Ghosts had two interlinked elements: a multi-media installation and a performance walk. The concept is inspired by inspired by Fabian Ware’s 1928 reflection that it would take the ‘ghostly army’ of the dead of the British and Imperial forces 3.5 days to march past the Cenotaph. 

A large-scale visual projection onto the walls of the restored Edwardian Station at Folkestone harbour showed a ‘ghostly army’ marching along its walls to the channel, for 84 hours straight. The commission featured an immersive soundscape by composer Thom Robson that interweaves new music with sounds and voices from the past, prompts reflection on the experience and impact of conflict in Folkestone since 1914. The final commission will be made available as a public event across Remembrance Day weekend in 2022.

In partnership with the University of Kent's Gateways to the First World War

This ground-breaking new hip hop dance theatre piece with Xzibit Young Creatives explored the theme of conscientious objectors in the First World War. Created in collaboration with award-winning dance artists and featuring young dancers from across the region. The piece featured an original soundtrack and incorporated archival materials from IWM and Nottingham Archives. 

Sunday 5 March, 2023 

Djanogly Theatre, Lakeside Arts, University of Nottingham

In partnership with Inspire Culture, Learning and Libraries

Following the world-leading Compagnie XY’s surprise appearances across the city in September 2022 for Les Voyages Derry-Londonderry, this spectacular contemporary French circus company has since been collaborating with artists and communities across the city to develop a new work for 2023.

Inspired by the people and communities of the city in sustaining 25 years of peace-building since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, AFTER THE RAIN explores physical and spiritual resilience in the face of obstacles through a mass collective acrobatic act of lifting each other up. It is Compagnie XY’s first ever work produced on the island of Ireland and is one of only two new works produced by this 40-strong collective of acrobats. The other for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

27 & 28 August 2023

Derry-London Derry City Centre

A major commission in partnership with Ulster University

An exhibition of new work by Ed Kluz displayed alongside art produced by veterans. Behind the Bastion is an art exhibition that tells the personal stories of British troops experience of ‘home’ whilst deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, and the lives they lived in operating bases. The exhibition is designed to generate new conversations about an overlooked aspect of deployment.

The visual language of Ed’s work is underpinned by a curiosity for the obscure. He draws inspiration from 17th, 18th and 19th century topographical and architectural representation, early photography, film and theatre.

9 June - August 28 2023

Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire.

In partnership with Bishop Grosseteste University

Friends, Foes and Good Companions, is a reportage exhibition by artist Olivier Kugler and writer Andrew Humphreys that explores the Cod Wars through the recollections of those that lived through it and reflects on the impact past and present on the fishing industry. 

28th April to 20th August 2023

Grimsby Fishing Heritage Centre

Created in partnership with Our Big Picture.

Tomorrow, will be a multimedia art installation from the Freedom Women Collective, of women who survived war, conflict and persecution: artists Arafa Hassan Gouda, Nisreen Barazi, Gaida Dirar, Shuke Halake Aeroro and Faisa Omar, with Lee Karen Stow and curator Sarah Perks.

In this commission the artists weave stories from Ethiopia, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Sudan using visual and textile art, sculpture, performance, poetry and photography. During the festival and on Saturdays, the collective invite you to special events in the studio to share experiences of loss, resistance, resilience and survival.

August 2023

In partnership with Freedom Festival, Hull