Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
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Increasing understanding amongst the public and arts professionals of how international arms trading is legitimised through cultural rituals - music, hospitality and etiquette.
The UK is one of the world’s largest arms exporters, selling weapons to countries that the Foreign Office has listed as human rights abusers, including Bahrain despite its violent suppression of pro-democracy protests, and Saudi Arabia during airstrikes on Yemen. The arms trade is one of the world’s most secretive industries and largely a mystery to the public.
Jill Gibbon is an artist, using drawing and performance to research the etiquette of the arms trade.
Lifting the lid on the murky world of arms sales, the artist Jill Gibbon has been infiltrating trade fairs organized by the defence industry for the last decade.
The Approach
She visits arms fairs covertly across Europe and the Middle East by dressing up as a security consultant. Once inside, she draws and collects complementary gifts, exploring how arms deals are normalised and glamorised through dress, manners and hospitality.
Her research is unique in using art to give an insight into the secretive world of the arms trade. Her drawings show tanks open for viewing, champagne served alongside missiles, and a string quartet on the back of a military truck. Complementary gifts include stress balls in the shape of bombs and grenades, toffees and condoms.
The impact
Gibbon’s research has introduced a new perspective on the international arms trade that has raised public awareness of the ways that international weapons sales are normalised through cultural rituals, including the sponsorship of cultural events. Her research has informed a play on the arms trade, and resulted in a prominent arms manufacturer, BAE Systems, being forced to relinquish sponsorship of two national cultural events. The significance, originality and rigour of her research has been recognised with an Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) Early Career Fellowship.
Influencing public awareness of culture and the arms trade
Gibbon’s research has introduced understanding to public debate of how weapons manufacturers appropriate cultural rituals to distance themselves from the use of their products. As a result of her exhibitions, Gibbon attracted international press coverage including one-to-one interviews, during which Gibbon shared new insights about the etiquette of arms fairs to combined audiences of over 2,114,442 (Source: Kantar). Following press coverage of Gibbon’s work, the exhibitions at the Bradford Peace Museum (BPM) and Royal West Academy (2014) attracted unusually high audiences.
I did not know that the UK makes arms that are sold around the world and that are responsible for harming civilians ... [this is an] eye-opening exhibition [which] unpicks the mystique of the arms trade.
Informing arts production
Gibbon’s work was used to inform a new contemporary arts production. After seeing Gibbon’s work at the BPM the Common Wealth Theatre Company included a scene of an arms fair in their play ‘I Have Met the Enemy’. The actors based gestures on Gibbon’s drawings which provided insights into a world which they would not otherwise have had access to. Co-Artistic Director Evie Manning wrote, ‘The exhibition's observations and depictions of the 'performance of respectability' has informed our play in such a way that we have built a significant opening scene around this idea and the characters, action and gestures that The Etiquette of the Arms Trade explored’.
Influencing collective action
Gibbon’s research contributed to an Art Not Arms campaign that successfully persuaded GEON to drop sponsorship from arms company BAE Systems in just five days. Gibbon’s research made a distinct and material contribution to the campaign in three ways.
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