Witness: Women War Artists, Imperial War Museum North, Manchester

"The camera doesn't see as the eye sees - when you look at a subject you see the things in it that are important to you; a camera sees everything flat."
This is how Margaret Abbess, one of the women artists featured in Witness: Women War Artists, explains how documentary photography and film can be used to capture bald facts, but only an artist can portray the essence of an event, particularly one as momentous as war.

It is evidently a view shared by the Imperial War Museum (IWM), which continues to commission war artists to record the activities of the armed forces in peace and in war.

One of the questions that this exhibition raises is whether a woman's eye view is different to that of a man's. It would be easy (and sexist) to assume that women artists would tend to portray a softer side of war and be preoccupied with the domestic challenges.

The exhibition is not chronological or based on specific conflicts. Instead it is organised into seven themed sections. The first of these is In Action, perhaps a deliberate attempt to get away from any stereotypes about women artists just concentrating on the home front.

But straightaway the problems that these artists have come up against are revealed. Women have been commissioned through official schemes since 1916, but they have been in a tiny minority (of the 3,000 plus artists commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee only 48 were women) and only very recently have they been allowed into battle with troops.

Linda Kitson was the first officially commissioned war artist to go with troops into battle in the Falklands war in 1982. Even then she had to travel on the QE2, a civilian ship that was a part of the taskforce, as women were not allowed on naval vessels. Her raw, hasty drawings capture life on board ship and the daily routines of the troops as well as the bleakness of the island landscape.

But more arresting even than her austere sketches is the display of her uniform and kit. Alongside this is a simple handwritten note: "If anything should happen to me the only important thing to save is the portfolio of drawings." Immediately the precarious position that war artists place themselves in is laid bare.

Photographs of Kitson at work on board ship and audio interviews in which she describes the scenes she recorded and how she was treated by troops - they respected the tradition of war artists and her official capacity - further help to contextualise her art.

What this exhibition does well throughout is to make all the artists real. So it is not just about the art of war, it is also about the artists themselves. Each artist has a simple story board with portrait, brief biographical details and their reflections on the impact of war.

This intimate approach is in keeping with the broad subject matter; ultimately all an artist can ever do is provide a subjective snapshot of a moment in time.

Gender separation

The layout and themes of the exhibition make it easy to navigate and the simple design is effective. The paintings are hung at eye-level against an unobtrusive pale grey background, and headings, artists' names, and quotes are picked out in green on the walls. The sharp angles and shapes of the exhibition design echo the exterior form of the building without being intrusive.

This is the first exhibition of its kind for over 50 years, a fact that at first seems surprising. But women artists have been included in group shows with their male counterparts before, so is it necessary or desirable to separate the artists on the basis of gender?

If nothing else it provides an interesting angle to explore the extensive art collection of the IWM. But also, precisely because many of the women artists were forced to stay at home, their art gives a fascinating insight into the impact of war on civilian lives.

The huge social change brought about by women replacing men in the factories during both world wars is a theme in the exhibition and is wrought in detail by two artists in particular.

Flora Lion's Women's Canteen at Phoenix Works, Bradford, from 1918 is a beautiful depiction of female solidarity at work. And Laura Knight's Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech-ring from 1943 is an iconic image of women and war work, produced at almost the same time as Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter on the other side of the Atlantic.

Knight was the first woman to be elected to the Royal Academy (RA), and a nearby news clip depicts her and Ruby Loftus visiting the RA show in 1943 when the painting was put on public display.

Impact of war

Part of the role of these paintings was as propaganda, to encourage women to work as part of the war effort, but with hindsight they also act as social documentary. The women in Lion's factory are experiencing independence and freedom from the domestic sphere for the first time: little do they know they will be forced back to the hearth as soon as the war ends.

The art also raises questions about the impact of war. Mary Kessell's drawings of refugees in Berlin in 1945 portray those displaced by the allied bombing of their homes.

A Mother and Child at a Railway Station, Berlin, is displayed alongside Kessell's diary entry at the time: "Will they ever live again? These bits and pieces of dirt and rags - shuffling - crawling - dribbling. These apathetic bundles of rags staring into space - waiting for trains that never came."

The dehumanising effect of war is echoed in the work of Frauke Eigen, who documented the death camps in Kosovo in 2000. Her photographs of victims' meagre possessions are evocative and moving.

"The sight of these bodies and the strong stench of formaldehyde made me leave the place and on my way out I saw these clothes laying there in the sun for drying after they had been washed. For some reason, maybe because these clothes were much more humanlike and recognisable than the bodies, I felt far more touched and disturbed and started to take pictures."

Women do not necessarily produce different art from men and not all women's art is similar. But this art was not created in a vacuum: the subject matter and the social conditions at the time forged it. Regardless of gender, this is a well-curated, thought-provoking and moving exhibition.