A RAW insight into life on the military frontline will be seen at mima in a moving and honest exhibition by official war artist Derek Eland.

His Diary Rooms exhibition has come to the Middlesbrough art gallery at a time when the country will be honouring the contribution of military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and later conflicts.

Most of his work is created on location and for this particular project through the use of diary rooms where people were able to write down their thoughts on a series of blank cards, detailing their hopes and fears about life in Afghanistan.

These uncensored cards were then displayed in and around the diary room, for all to share their individual experiences on the front line of a contemporary conflict.

The exhibition in mima recreates one of those rooms for visitors to experience.

The former paratrooper turned artist said: “I wanted to see if the soldiers of today wrote about anything different to those who wrote from the trenches to their loved ones back home - but I was surprised to see they wrote about the same topics, just in a different format.”

He was initially surprised at how motivated the soldiers were; writing with the same intensity with which they fought; with soldiers often referring to ‘two wars’, one involving bullets and bombs and the other which goes on in a soldier’s head when everything goes quiet.

Diary Rooms opens to the public on Tuesday, November 11.