An exhibition titled ’Children of Jerusalem-Painting Pain, Dreaming Peace’ will be on display at the Ben Uri Jewish art gallery in London this December.

The exhibition, which will run from 4 December until 23rd December 2005, hopes to encapsulate Israeli and Palestinian children’s hopes for peace through art. The children have created works of art that present both shocking images of conflict and the wish for a more harmonious future.

The project was the brainchild of the Institute for the Study of Religions and Communities in Israel and the East Jerusalem Department of the Jerusalem Municipality.

Over two years, the children took part in workshops lead by Israeli and Palestinian artists, which aimed to show how art could build a bridge between people and nations.

The Hope of Children

This exhibition reflects exactly the mix of high quality artistic expression and social impact that Ben Uri sees as being part of the role of museums in this changed world David Glasser

One example of this art is titled ’Spring’, a brightly coloured painting by Palestinian Reem Al-Halawani, featuring heart-shaped Israeli and Palestinian flags. Another Palestinian artist, Hazem Abu Nijme, has painted a striking image of doves.

Bar, a 10-year old Israeli, said after taking part in the project: “I want peace so that when I walk past them (Palestinians), the fear will disappear, no one will fear each other and we will live in peace without wars.”

The Ben Uri, in St John’s Wood, North-West London, is bringing over four of the children and two of the teachers, to talk about the exhibition.

Gallery chairman David Glasser told EJP: “This exhibition reflects exactly the mix of high quality artistic expression and social impact that Ben Uri sees as being part of the role of museums in this changed world. Here is an example of art truly being used as a universal language, crossing cultural and ethnic divides.”

The exhibition was launched to international acclaim in Jerusalem; the exhibition has already been shown abroad when it traveled to Geneva.
Joash Woodrow at the Ben Uri

From 12 September until 20 December the Ben Uri Gallery will exhibit work by the artist Joash Woodrow titled ’ A lost artist comes into light’. Woodrow became known to the art world in 2001, when several thousand works were discovered in his home in Leeds following a fire.

Lilies in a Blue and White Stripped Vase by Joash Woodrow Courtesy of the Ben Uri Gallery

The artist, who now lives in Manchester, was hailed as one of the brightest stars of the Royal College of Art during the 1950s. Woodrow then suffered a nervous breakdown and lived an almost reclusive lifestyle. Over the next 50 years he produced over 5,000 paintings, influenced mainly by Picasso and Expressionism.

Ben Uri Curator Nicholas Usherwood said that Joash Woodrow was “no isolated eccentric, but rather an artist who knows exactly what he was after and, when he found it, retreated into a self-imposed and intensely painful exile in order to explore it without disturbance. (It was) a world complete and entire in itself.”

The exhibition has been organised in partnership with 108 Fine Art, Harrogate and the Joash Woodrow Collection.

Ben Uri Gallery, the London Jewish Museum of Art, is Europe’s only dedicated Jewish Museum of Art working in partnership with both secular and Jewish Museums in the UK and internationally.

Conceived in 1914, it was founded in 1915 in the East End of London by the charismatic Russian-born Jewish artist Lazar Berson.

The Ben Uri Gallery, 108a Boundary Road, London NW8
Tel: 00 44 20-7604 3991 www.benuri.org.uk