Four our monthly curator’s talk, we propose this talk by former curator Ben Harman, introducing one of our 2013 exhibitions, Living with War: Artists on War and Conflict.

The exhibition has been on show in Gallery 1 at the Gallery of Modern Art from 27 September 2013 – 9 March 2014.

Living with War: Artists on War and Conflict included film, installation, painting, printmaking and photography from Glasgow Museums’ modern and contemporary art collections. It explored how artists from around the world have used their work to highlight the effects of war and conflicts on societies and cultures. Living with War: Artists on War and Conflict covered 200 years of artists’ responses to human-made atrocity, from Goya’s ‘The Disasters of War’ etchings (1810–20) to one of Jenny Holzer’s LED screens. Through a wide range of works taken from Glasgow Museums’ collection, Living with War not only provides perspective on how artists attempt to make an impact by exploring issues such as sectarianism, famine and torture, but it also showcases how effective such attempts at artistic political action can be.

Artists: Francisco Goya, Jenny Holzer, Peter Kennard, Otto Dix, Christopher Nevinson, William McCance, Paul Nash, Stanley Matchett, Steven Campbell, Barbara Kruger, kennardphillipps, Hong Song-dam, Anthony Schrag, Emily Jacir, Kathe Kollwitz, The Altas Group, Omer Fast, Sebastião Salgado, Graham Fagen, Kate Davis, Conrad Atkinson.