Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press

In this show, Fiona Banner continues to explore language, conflict and gender through a range of media, including drawing, sculpture and the moving image. Here, Banner considers the possibilities and meanings embodied in the word ‘Disarm’, most notably in recent films where nature and landscape collide with the contradictory realities of destruction, naivety and hope.

DISARM (landscape) (2024), captures the absurdity of military flypasts which Banner describes as ‘a raw moment of extreme weather; a violent murmuration.’ This flypast manifests an instant in which language meets its limits – subverting the macho message of military power, as the planes in formation race across an immense cloudscape spelling out the word DISARM. These jets perform a desire for peace rather than conflict and in doing so signal their own demise, transforming a jingoistic display of military might into a call for global disarmament. In contrast to the scale and hubris of the flypast itself, Banner’s image seems low-key, contradicting the technological precision of the event. The action happens amongst the birds, the sky … the banality of an undistinguished landscape … the sound coming first, waiting for the planes to erupt into the frame. The aircraft within the formation are different and from non-allied countries. Banner notes that the planes are named after forces of nature ‘so it speaks of our assault on the planet as well as each other.’ D: Flying Leopard, I: Typhoon, S: Flanker, A: Falcon, R: Golden Eagle, M: Lightning.

Duration	21 March 2025 - 03 May 2025
Times	Tuesday–Friday: 11–6 Saturday: 11–5 (
Cost	Free
Venue	Frith Street Gallery
Address	17-18 Golden Square, London, W1F 9JJ
Contact	020 7494 1550 / info@frithstreetgallery.com / www.frithstreetgallery.com

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