The UK and US governments regularly grant export licences for arms sales to unstable states and repressive regimes. How are these deals validated? This project uses a body of artworks that I have made undercover in arms fairs to address this problem. It aims to show how the arms industry is given an appearance of respectability through rituals of etiquette, and to challenge this veneer by juxtaposing the art with research about the impact of arms sales.

I am an artist using drawing and performance to research the arms trade. I have visited arms fairs covertly since 2008 by dressing up as an arms trader with a suit, paste pearls, and a sham business. Once inside, I draw the manners, hospitality and weapons, and collect complimentary gifts. A colleague has photographed my performance. Arms fairs are infrequent but having worked on the project for several years, I now have a substantial body of drawings, gifts, and photographs. I am seeking this fellowship to disseminate and contextualise this work through an exhibition at the Bradford Peace Museum, catalogue, website, articles, and a book pitch.

The project responds to calls for the use of aesthetic methods to study war (Bleiker, 2001; Sylvester, 2010) by using drawing and performance to bring new insights to research about the arms trade (Feinstein, 2012; Omega Foundation, 2017; Wright, 2008). It addresses ISRF goals by using an interdisciplinary methodology to tackle an urgent political problem - the international trade in weapons. It uses art to convey the micro-social processes that allow arms deals to authoritarian regimes, and challenges those processes with social science research.