A welcome from Iraq

Saddam is Here, 2009-2010

Image by Jamal Penjweny and the RUYA Foundation

Welcome to Iraq is the name of the exhibition, and the organisers really do generate a feeling of hospitality.

After all, how many exhibitions have a long table with date cakes and tea on offer, comfortable sofas for viewing laptop films, and tables with piles of books and comics about the country?

Oh yes, and there’s the work itself: paintings, cartoons, sculptures and videos.

Conflict and repression are present in this group show that is a restaging of part of the Iraqi pavilion at last year’s Venice Biennale, but the overall impressions – helped by the gallery’s generous space and light – are of diversity, playfulness, adherence to values and warmth.

Abdul Khreef sculpts from discarded objects, with environmentally-conscious recycling in mind;  Cheeman Ismaeel uses televisions and lunchboxes as canvases; Yassen Wami and Hashim Taeeh make furniture from new and used cardboard; Abdul Raheem Yassir’s political cartoons draw rueful smiles and a solid punch; Jamal Penjweny photographs Iraqis in everyday situations holding pictures of Saddam Hussein over their own faces; Kadhim Nwir’s colourful abstractions give teasing hints about their meaning. In contrast, Bassim Al-Shaker’s traditional paintings depict life in the marshlands that the ousted dictator tried to drain.

Furat al Jamil’s sculpture, in which honeycomb drips into an antique pot, is sadder, and filmmakers Akeel Khreef and Hareth Alhomaam – whose work can be view from those comfortable sofas – focus on relations between the sexes and a drama about family life.

None of the work is revelatory, some is ordinary, but all is of interest, offering rarely seen views of a country obscured by the smoke of battle. In that sense, the exhibition is a success, well worth taking the trouble to see.

But there’s also icing on the cake, in the form of two projected films by Penjweny, which are the stand-out attractions. They are short, rough and ready and superb.

There the Gun is about a popular, Kurdish-run gun stall (“Even most Ministers come here to buy guns”/ “I have a small son who is growing up. I want him to have a gun”/ “To me, to be honest, selling guns is a blessed thing to do”). In a few deft minutes it manages to give disturbing flashes of insight about Iraqi lives and attitudes.

Another Life focusses on a particular set of lives: a group of alcohol smugglers who take their illicit cargo into Iran. Again, Penjweny packs who lives into a few short minutes, and ends with a crunching flourish.

Brilliant. Are these films "art"?. Probabl not, ut they lift an interesting and pleasurable exhibition to another level.

*Welcome to Iraq is at the South London Gallery, 65-67 Peckham Road, London SE5 8UH, until 1 June. Admission free.  Info: 7703 6120/ http://www.southlondongallery.org/

+ Wednesday 16 April, readings and music plus traditional Iraqi cuisine, 5-9pm