A SHORT FUZE

Explosion is delighted to announce the installation of a new exhibition that will run from June until October amongst the existing gallery displays.

The exhibition is the work of artist Helen Snell who is artist in residence at the National Museum of the Royal Navy until 2015. Explosion, now part of the National Museum, will benefit from a number of initiatives including the artist residency project.

Artist Helen Snell said of the exhibition - It is a great privilege to be artist in residence at the National Museum of the Royal Navy and to have access to the extraordinary archives across all of the museums. With each new visit I get a growing sense of the vast and breath taking scale of the collections that chart such pivotal and diverse moments in our history. Each visit is a journey in its own right. I have been very challenged, humbled and inspired by the things I have seen so far.

I have found the collections at Explosion to be some of the most demanding and sobering of all the museums. It is bewildering to be faced with so much hardware that has been designed, in methodical and chilling detail, to cause death and destruction. Politics aside, these objects ultimately make us question how and why our powers of empathy fail. They symbolise the breakdown of complex systems of communication and diplomacy, which leads to violent conflict. We are reminded of our inadequacies as human beings.

How is it possible to intellectually remove ourselves from the tragic reality of warfare? The saturation media coverage of violent conflict fails to cause the shock and outrage that it should. Do we too easily accept that we need to fight for peace?

Whilst it is important to value the extraordinary technical innovation engendered by conflict, war remains a self perpetuating commerce. The sad truth is that our politicians still seem to race for ever more sophisticated and expensive weaponry. We must however hope that one day future generations will consider our tribalism as a quaint irrelevance as we move inexorably towards a more connected global world .

In these works I have felt compelled to look behind the sets, props and costumes of "the theatre of war" and to question the sometimes irreconcilable contradictions that shape the call of duty.

Museum Operations Manager Marc Farrance said ‘we are delighted to welcome Helen Snell to the Museum for what is hoped will be the first of many ‘artists in residence’. A Short Fuze’ is a very different interpretation on the Museum subject matter and one that has inspired the interest of all at the Museum so far. We hope that the exhibition will also prove popular amongst our visitors and that they will find the displays as thought provoking as Museum staff and volunteers.

For more information visit http://www.explosion.org.uk/index.php/visitor-info/events-calendar/icalrepeat.detail/2014/06/01/30/-/a-short-fuze-exhibition-by-helen-snell