LONDON.- Pump House Gallery presents a group exhibition based on Graham Greene’s 1934 novel It’s a Battlefield. Focusing on Drover, a bus driver sentenced to hang for stabbing a police officer about to attack his wife at a communist rally, Greene’s book take on ideas of administrative power, disempowerment of the individual and the impact of bureaucratic structures when misused.

Written and based in Wandsworth, the novel explores the intersecting lives of those close to Drover in the days before his hanging. The structures that circle around the protagonist, who is for the most part absent from the action, make up a complex web of influences completely out of Drover’s control, highlighting the power of bureaucracy and administration and the responsibilities that come with it.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan presents Language Gulf in the Shouting Valley (2013), an audiovisual essay on the politics of language and the conditions of voice faced by the Druze community living between Palestine/Israel and Syria. In one voice we can simultaneously hear the collaborator and the traitor, the translator and the transgressor. Lenka Clayton’s work Qaeda, quality, question, quickly, quickly, quiet (2002) is an alphabetical rearrangement of President George W. Bush's 2002 "Axis of Evil” speech that takes the rhetoric of political speech into the realms of the absurd. Harun Farocki’s How to live in the FRG (1990) studies training and instructional videos that reveal the alarming and hilarious rehearsed ways in which our lives are led. Tom McCaughan's work uses video and dismantled electronics to play with labour and autonomy. The installation for this exhibition looks for self-sufficiency, something that inevitably remains just beyond reach.

The new and existing works presented by the artists in the exhibition are evocative of both the thematic concerns and the narrative essence of the book. The sense of foreboding that comes with institutional frameworks which erode the individuals’ agency can be found in the intricate investigations and playful frustrations of the work. The resulting exhibition never suggests a solution but instead points to the encroachment of powerful structures on the individual, whether that be through labour management, rhetoric, voice and language or the close management of our daily lives.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan (b. 1985) is an artist and ‘private ear’ whose projects have taken the form of audiovisual installations, performances, graphic works, photography, Islamic sermons, cassette tape compositions, crisp packets, essays and lectures. Abu Hamdan’s interest in sound and its intersection with politics originates from his background in DIY music. In 2013 Abu Hamdan’s audio documentary The Freedom of Speech Itself was submitted as evidence at the UK asylum tribunal where the artist himself was called to testify as an expert witness.

Recent solo exhibitions include Earshot, Portikus, Frankfurt, 2016; تقيه (taqiyya), Kunsthalle St Gallen, Saint Gallen, 2015; Tape Echo, Beirut, Cairo and Van AbbeMuseum, Eindhoven, 2013; The Freedom Of Speech Itself, Showroom, London, 2012; The Whole Truth, Casco, Utrecht, 2012.

Lenka Clayton (b. 1977) is a British interdisciplinary artist whose work considers, exaggerates and alters the accepted rules of everyday life, extending the familiar into the realms of the poetic and absurd. She is currently artist-in-residence at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia and also working on a large-scale project with artist Jon Rubin to be opened at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in Spring 2017.

Recent projects include Two Itinerant Quilters (2015–ongoing); 7,000 Stones (2009); Local Newspaper (2007); and People in Order (2006). In 2012 Clayton founded An Artist Residency in Motherhood, a project currently occurring in 154 homes in 21 countries around the world.

Harun Farocki (1944-2014) was a filmmaker, lecturer and author. He directed over 120 films from 1967 onwards. His work is concerned with political imperatives and the history of filmmaking; he often used disparate archival or found footage and later in his career moved into video and digital formats.

Tom McCaughan (b. 1986) lives and works in London. He has exhibited and screened work in independent art institutions, including Coleman Project Space, Legion TV and Art Licks.