MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Artists' exhibition on Falklands Conflict

An imaginative artistic exhibition commemorating the Falklands Conflict in a new light is attracting the interest of visitors to London's famous Imperial War Museum. It is one of a series of exhibitions marking the 20th anniversary.

The exhibition, entitled "Traces of Conflict", displays the work of four artists from the University of Dundee in Scotland, all of them of the same generation as those who fought in 1982. They drew their inspiration from visiting the Falkland Islands and various battle sites. Their work is a response to their own poignant memories of 20 years ago as well as their feelings when they saw the traces of war that remain on the battlefields.

The exhibition, which continues for three months until June 23rd, contains interactive, digital and print-based media by the artists, who are from the University's Duncan of Jordanstone faculty of art and design. They have used sound, with historic and contemporary photographs, water colours, print media and computer-generated imagery, for a programme projected onto a wall of the gallery.

Images from the battlefields
A water colour artist, Gareth Fisher, climbed Mount Harriet, where he found personal belongings, clothes, shoes, a book, tins and bottles as well as rusting armaments, lying undisturbed. He speaks of the ruins of military architecture and installations, wrecked vehicles and equipment, the new modern graveyards, all "awesome reminders of death and loss, more potent than official memorials".

Elaine Shemilt also talks of the remaining evidence of war -- the minefields, the military debris, and the war graves. She visited the site of the 1982 field hospital in the shattered refrigeration plant at Ajax Bay. She says: "I am aware that my sons have reached the age when many of those young men involved in the fighting lost their lives".

Roland Ashcroft found the Argentine cemetery at Darwin "very moving because it was so openly about grief and loss". He noticed the contrasts of the military and civil communities, and the contrast between life and death, recalling the tragic loss of hundreds of British and Argentine men.

The fourth artist, Gary Gowans, says his perspective came from experiencing the conflict at home in Scotland watching the war from his living room, in pubs and cafes, and shop windows, on television. He says: "Initial disbelief turned to incredulity as intermittent incidents escalated to full blown conflict".

Navy exhibitions display missiles
An exhibition called "Explosion!" opens at the Museum of Naval Firepower in Gosport, on Saturday, May 4, and runs until the end of October. Many of the missiles fired during the conflict will be on show including the much-feared Exocet anti-ship missile, the Seawolf and the Sea Dart surface-to-air missiles.

Naval Action in the Falklands War will feature signed documents from President Ronald Reagan, Baroness Thatcher and Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward, the Task Group Commander.

A Falklands exhibition at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton has been opened by Admiral Sir Michael Layard, who was the Senior Naval Officer on board Atlantic Conveyor when it was hit by an Argentine Exocet.

Famous "Humphrey" helicopter on show
The Fleet Air Arm provided the majority of aircraft used in the campaign, including Sea Harrier fighters and Wessex, Lynx and Sea King helicopters.

Centrepiece of the exhibition is the Westland Wessex helicopter 'Humphrey', which served on board County-class guided missile destroyer HMS Antrim. Humphrey was involved in the attacks on the Argentine submarine Santa Fe and in rescuing British forces stranded in blizzards on a glacier in South Georgia.

The Fleet Air Arm lost 23 of its members in the campaign, 12 of them from Yeovilton squadrons, and they are commemorated by 12 beech trees on the Yeovilton sports field.

Harold Briley, (MP) London