A BRADFORD museum is offering visitors a unique look inside the controversial and secretive world of arms fairs.

Jill Gibbon has spent the past decade going undercover at arms fairs across the world. Disguised as a weapons industry insider, she sketches the people and various scenes she witnesses inside these events.

Now a collection of her sketches are on display at Bradford's Peace Museum as part of its new exhibition The Etiquette of the Arms Trade, which opened yesterday.

The sketches depict scenes of arms traders showing off guns, tanks and missiles. One piece captures a string quartet playing for guests while they peruse the latest weapons of war.

One striking image shows a woman applying make up while stood next to two huge artillery shells.

Also on display are the "disguise" Mrs Gibbon wears when she visits the fairs - a suit, shirt and pearls, and free gifts that are handed out to visitors, including stress balls shaped like grenades and a soldier's head.

Mrs Gibbon, who lives in the Peak District, had previously protested outside such fairs, but around 10 years ago decided to infiltrate them to shine a light on exactly what goes on inside.

To get into the fairs she sets up a false company, and once inside sketches what she sees by pretending to take notes. She was found out by one of the fairs in London, and has been unable to get into that fair since.

Shortly before the exhibition opened, Mrs Gibbon, 56, told the Telegraph & Argus that her aim in displaying the sketches was to make the arms industry much more visible. Her images are not made to identify individual people, but to instead expose the industry.

She said: "Each persona works for a few years, but eventually they see through it. Eventually someone notices I'm drawing.

"I thought arms sales would be these quiet rooms where people had discreet meetings. It is not like that at all, people stand around with glasses of champagne while people show off these weapons. These events have an air of respectability, even while they are selling weapons to repressive regimes.

"The weapons are presented as these beautifully engineered pieces of equipment.

"There are music videos showing explosions on a loop, but they never show the impact of these explosions.

"It is tricky, because I don't want to normalise what happens at these fairs, but you do want to show that to these people this is normal."

The exhibition runs until June 28. For more information, including opening times, visit peacemuseum.org.uk/