Uploaded May 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Although our doors are currently closed at the moment, we will be reopening our London art exhibition ‘In Air and Fire: War Artists, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz’ on 17 May.
In this video artist Stephen Mumberson, Associate Professor of Painting and Printmaking, Middlesex University, discusses the compositional approach of the ink drawing ‘Filter Room’ (1944) by artist Elva Blacker (1908- 84), who after her studies at the Slade School of Fine Art (1936-39) served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force as an Aircraftswoman at RAF Biggin Hill.
In it Stephen discusses Blacker’s convention of making small portrait drawings of individual sitters which she then combined into multi-figure compositions of activities – such as in the filter room where data was gathered by WAAFs from the Observer Corps and radar stations and passed to Fighter Command.
Admission to this exhibition is free of charge and is available as part of your general admission to our London site. You can pre-book your ticket now at: rafmuseum.org.uk/london/whats-going-on/events/in-air-and-fire-war-artists-the-battle-of-britai
Although our doors are currently closed at the moment, we will be reopening our London art exhibition ‘In Air and Fire: War Artists, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz’ on 17 May.
In this video artist Stephen Mumberson, Associate Professor of Painting and Printmaking, Middlesex University, discusses the compositional approach of the ink drawing ‘Filter Room’ (1944) by artist Elva Blacker (1908- 84), who after her studies at the Slade School of Fine Art (1936-39) served in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force as an Aircraftswoman at RAF Biggin Hill.
In it Stephen discusses Blacker’s convention of making small portrait drawings of individual sitters which she then combined into multi-figure compositions of activities – such as in the filter room where data was gathered by WAAFs from the Observer Corps and radar stations and passed to Fighter Command.
Admission to this exhibition is free of charge and is available as part of your general admission to our London site. You can pre-book your ticket now at: rafmuseum.org.uk/london/whats-going-on/events/in-air-and-fire-war-artists-the-battle-of-britai
