Second Glance Exhibition

Second Glance: Alternative Narratives on Peace and Conflict is a response to the spirit of London 2012 and highlights the fact that sport has a long tradition of promoting peace.

The exhibition showcases recently acquired works by The Peace Museum as well as loans from a private collection and Goldmark Gallery and includes internationally renowned artists such as Yinka Shonibare, Nils Burwitz, Salima Hashmi, Arpana Caur and the late Roderic Barrett. Second Glance also includes newly commissioned ceramics by Anna Lambert, Jessica Ball and Kyoko Takahashi as well as drawings by Asad Hayee and Will Dawson.

Second Glance demonstrates that artists’ perspectives, often at odds with the dominant narratives of our world, pose a powerful challenge to realpolitik ideology.

Salima Hashmi’s Rain 1, inspired by the opening of a number of crossing points on the Line of Control between India and Pakistan after the horrific Kashmir earthquake in 2005, is also a comment on the fact that it took a cataclysmic natural disaster to bring the two countries, however briefly, together.

Nils Burwitz’s Caustic Art is a response to the infamous practice of necklacing with burning tyres in South Africa and the ugliness and hatred spawned by an apartheid state.

Yinka Shonibare’s Climate Shit Painting explores the conflict between the environment and us in the seemingly relentless march to “progress”.

Kyoko Takahashi and Anna Lambert’s ceramics reinforce the importance of our connections with the natural world, whereas Jessica Ball’s tongue in cheek Stirring the Pot is a reminder of how using sport to promote peace can often get sabotaged by the self-interest of the nations involved.

Will Dawson and Asad Hayee’s miniature depictions of creatures of fable remind us that animals both mythical and real connect us in very powerful ways to the world of the imagination and are important to our sense of harmony and balance.

Clive Barrett, Chair of the Trustees of The Peace Museum says: “The Peace Museum is very pleased that our newly acquired works of art will be seen in such a beautiful space. The exhibition encourages people to pause and reflect on the nature of peace and conflict in a year when we are hosting the Olympics. I would like to thank all of the artists involved for contributing to this discourse in such varied and imaginative ways. I would particularly like to thank the artists Arpana Caur and Salima Hashmi for their generous gifts of work to The Peace Museum”.

Nima Poovaya-Smith, Director, Alchemy and exhibition curator says: “This was an exciting exhibition to curate. The wide-ranging nature of the exhibition theme gave us the freedom to bring together the works of very different artists, many of whom normally may not have been shown together. This has created a fascinating dynamic between the works”.

Second Glance is a partnership between The Peace Museum, Alchemy, Rydale Folk Museum, and Bede’s World, Jarrow. The exhibition has been conceived and curated by Alchemy.

Exhibition showings

Second Glance was on display at Ryedale Folk Museum, Hutton le Hole, North Yorkshire from 18th February – 18th March 2012 and at Bede’s World, Jarrow from 23rd March – 8th May 2012.