As we have seen from the tragic mass shootings in the US, weapons do more harm than good. So it’s particularly disturbing to think that, every two years, arms dealers descend on London to explore what weapons are hot right now. In protest of the bi-yearly September event, parallel exhibition Art the Arms Fair is returning for its second year.

This year’s protest show will be held in Peckham, and will see the anonymous feminist art collective Guerrilla Girls join 200 other artists including Peter Kennard, Saba Jallas, and Jill Gibbon.

The Guerrilla Girls art-activist group has long been passionate about fighting against weapons, recently taking their work out of the Design Museum in protest of the establishment hosting an event for a global arms company.

Art the Arms Fair is organised to oppose the Defence Systems & Equipment International arms fair, which is held in London’s Docklands and attracts around 35,000 visitors from over 50 countries. The counter-exhibition was first launched in 2017, and saw Banksy contribute a work titled “Civilian Drone Strike” which featured three drones flying above a sketch of a child’s bombed house. 

As before, the show will culminate in an auction to raise money for Campaign Against Arms Trade and human rights organisation Reprieve. The last exhibition raised £250,000 in total – £205,000 of that from Banksy’s artwork alone.

“The work on display will explore the causes and impacts of war, as well as envisioning a different world”, organiser Rhianna Louise told The Art Newspaper. “The DSEI arms fair brings war and conflict to London. We will challenge it with something powerful, provocative, and beautiful.”

With the current state of the world’s governments, and the number of innocent people senselessly killed every day because of gun violence, events like Art the Arms Fair are vital to enforce to world leaders that we don’t want their weapons. 

Art the Arms Fair will run at Peckham’s Maverick Projects from September 3 – 13