Mark Neville

Part of the IWM Contemporary series. A new body of work created in response to the war in Afghanistan. Mark Neville was commissioned in 2010 as part of a unique collaboration between IWM's Art Commissions Committee and arts organisation firstsite to spend two months with the 16 Air Assault Brigade in Afghanistan.

Neville filmed and photographed British soldiers and Afghan civilians using a variety of innovative approaches. These included slow motion filming, and the use of a series of backdrops made with resonant images of past wars. Avoiding the conventions of media reporting, the artist gives us an arrestingly direct and yet poetic view of British troops and the Afghan people they encountered.