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Throne of Weapons is on a
national tour
Frances Carey reports on its success
Throne of Weapons
'I like to spend some time in Mozambique... among the lovely people
living free...' sang Bob Dylan in 1976, the year after Mozambique attained
its independance from Portuguese rule. It was a hard-won freedom, symbolised
by the red triangle on the national flag, whose central motif is a rifle
crossed with a hoe. Even harder were the ensuing years of civil war
until the UN negotiated peace in 1992. The British Museum's emblem of
the legacy of that particular history, is of course, the Throne
of Weapons, whose reception around the UK is proving an exemplar
of the slogan: 'Think global, act local'. An object with very specific
associations in its original context, it has gained both a universal
significance and a local immediacy wherever it goes.
At the Horniman Museum in South London the tour began with an impassioned
discussion that ranged over the view from Africa to issues of local
gun crime.
The ulster Museum in Belfast was the next stop on the tour. At the
time of the IRA ceasefire in 1994 Seamus Heaney wrote: 'The cessation
of violence is an opertunity to open a space - and not just in the political
arena but in the first level of each person's consciousness - a space
where hope can grow'. Fergal Keane, the former BBC correspondent in
South Africa who has also reported from Rwanda and Zimbabwe, presided
over the launch at the museum, and chose to interweave his African experience
with the contemporary situation in Northern Ireland where the murder
of Robert McCartney was dominating the headlines. The Throne
was placed within the contemplation area of the award-winning exhibition
Conflict: The Irish at War and was the focus for an ambitious
mural project undertaken by four young artists drawn from both sides
of the Irish border, as part of a human rights initiative: 80:20
Educating and Acting for a Better World. They and John Johnston,
the teacher leading the combined effort, saw the Throne of Weapons
as a 'fragile yet powerful anti-war statement that has been designed
and created to provoke reaction', incorporating in into the layered
imagery of IRA and Loyalist murals, that was overpainted with tiers
of boxed weaponry 'decommissioned by time and now for educational use
only, not war'.
The concequences of the arms trade at international and local levels;
the transformative power of artistic expression and its importance in
rebuilding the fabric of society - these layers of meaning accumulate
as the Throne of Weapons is shown in museums, schools, a shopping
centre, the National Youth Eisteddfod in Wales, a cathedral and a prison.
Through an increasing repertoire of interpretation, the Throne of
Weapons is becoming part of the cultural capital for audiences
far beyond 'the lovely people living free upon the beach in Mozambique'.
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Above: Diagram of Throne of Weapons, drawn
by Anne Searight, British Museum, with identification of the weapons
by Paul Cornish of the Imperial War Museum
Left: Mural, by Dylan Haskins, Dan Carey, Craig Chapman,
Sharon Rose and John Johnston. (© National Museums and Galleries
of Northern Ireland and the artists. Photo courtesy of MAGNI)
The Throne of Weapons tour is in association with the BBC and 'Africa
05', supported by the UK National Commission for UNESCO. Manchester
Museum (to 7 July); Perth Museum and Art Gallery (9-29 August); Bristol
City Museum and Art Gallery (1-30 October) and the Herbert, Coventry
(1-27 November). For further details on the diagram above, see www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass
 (Article
reproduced from British Museum Magazine, No.52 - Summer 205)
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