Friends help curate CO exhibition
‘Fabric of Choice’, an exhibition of images and words illustrating the life of Arthur Denby Wilkinson
Friends House Library staff have helped bring together a new exhibition by photographic artist Nick Smith about his cconscientious objector (CO) grandfather. ‘Fabric of Choice’, at the Belfast Exposed gallery, consisted of images and words illustrating the life of Arthur Denby Wilkinson. According to Belfast Exposed, the world war one CO ‘lived a long and seemingly conventional life, one of a worker, father, grandfather and also that of a farmer and farm manager’.
Nick Smith said: ‘The part of his story that instigated this project was his resistance to being conscripted into the British army in the closing stages of world war one. Though his [life] was reasonably well known to me, accessing his prison letters helped to fill out a picture of him beyond our memories, to where the mind of an eighteen-year-old is when they make such a profound decision about their life.’
Writing on its Facebook page, Friends House Library staff said: ‘We were excited to support Nick in creating this work and happy to see it on display!’
According to records from the Imperial War Museum, the CO was imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs, Rimac Camp and Lincoln Gaol from 1918 to 1919.
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