Now on bbc news, bbc persian� s arts reporter, maryam erfan, introduces us to epic iran. Its the biggest exhibition of iranian Art And Culture in the uk in nearly a century. Hundreds of artefacts showcasing one of the worlds great civilisations, from 5,000 years ago to the present day. 0ne absolutely spectacular piece is a little gold chariot. And youll see it consists of a lot of tiny parts which have been soldered together. Its a technological masterpiece. Its hosted by Londons Victoria and Albert Museum the V A. Im maryam erfan, and i cover arts for bbc persia. The epic Iran Exhibit has been hugely popular, and ive come to share some of the highlights of this wonderful exhibition with you, and to introduce you to some of the experts behind the making of it. It was quite a task, with objects coming from Art Collections all over the world. I know there are some real treasures here from my homeland some of them have never been on public display before. And i feel privileged to see them up close. The exhibition covers the ancient, islamic, and modern periods. When you come to this contemporary period, they are unafraid to address issues such as gender or politics. And very often, the works test the boundaries of censorship and control. Video Art And Installation sit alongside carpets, ceramics, and metalworks. We will hear from the top experts behind the exhibition to bring 5,000 years of artistic mastery. This is epic iran. This exhibition is very unusual, in that it traces the history and cultural development of iran from the beginning of history, which we reckon to be about 3200 Bc thats when the first rudimentary writing appears in iran right up until now. So thats a 5,000 year continuum. The first section starts at 3200 Bc, with the introduction of writing, and it goes on until the start of the Achaemenid Empire in 550. So that in itself covers a very long period. We call that emerging iran. There are some very interesting pieces in the first part of the exhibition showing the advanced and prosperous civilisations in some of those centres. Particularly, for example, in ilam, in southwestern iran, i draw your attention to a very fine little Bronze Group which shows a man and a woman, possibly a king and a queen. They are worshipping figures, and it was undoubtedly something that was put into a shrine in order to represent the supplicants in perpetuity. Also some very interesting gold vessels from the malik area, just to the south of the Caspian Sea. The area was controlled by Robber Barons who made themselves very wealthy by exacting tolls on people using the east West Trade Route that went just to the south of the Caspian Sea. The second section is devoted to the achaemenid iran so, the persian empire which begins in 550 when Cyrus The Great seized power and united the medes and the persians. One of the most famous artefacts dating from that period is the very famous Cyrus Cylinder sometimes known as the first bill of human rights. In this cylinder, after he captured babylon, he describes how he sent statues of gods back to shrines from which they had been removed and seized by the babylonian kings. In other words, allowing the people in those shrines to continue worshipping the gods they were worshipping before. What i would like to draw your attention to is a series of Plaster Casts of these reliefs at persepolis. And what weve done here is project onto them the original colours. And this is how these Reliefs Wouldve looked in antiquity. All the reliefs that one knows from this period were originally coloured. So what weve done is Project Colour lights onto that relief to show the public exactly how these Reliefs Wouldve appeared in antiquity. Just next to me here is a series of Plaster Casts of Glazed Brick Panels from susa that are in the louvre. And these were commissioned by the Victoria And Albert museum in the 19th Century when it was collecting casts for its very famous cast forum, and so on. And theyve never actually been on display before. The third section for which i was responsible is dealing with the parthian and sasanian empires. And what i draw your attention to there is some of the magnificently decorated silver dishes. Many of them show the King Hunting but all of them show some elements of zoroastrian iconography symbolism, because by this time, of course, zoroastrian had become the State Religion of iran. Theres a variety of materials, of course, ranging from ceramics to metal work, to gold. And objects are engraved or carved out of stone and glass, as well, of course. We have very complicated bronze castings and those testify to the skill of the craftsmen at that very, very early date. And thats apparent, i think, all the way through the exhibition. Youll see three axes, for example, dating from around 2500 bc. Even to do such a Casting Today requires a high level of skill. And then, coming on a bit later, of course, weve got these magnificent silk textiles with very colourful and wonderful designs on them. And one absolutely spectacular piece is a little gold chariot. And youll see that it consists of lots of tiny parts which have been soldered together. Again, its a technological masterpiece. The ancient world ended with the Arab Conquest Of Persia in the seventh century. Islam gradually became the dominant religion. The second section of the exhibition is about the islamic period. It begins with a section on the shahnameh. This is a very important part of the exhibition, which links antiquity with the islamic period in a very forceful way. You can call it the first Great Work Of Persian Literature after the islamic conquest, when persian had begun to be written in the arabic alphabet. It preserved much of the Vocabulary And Grammar of middle persian, which was the language used by the sasanians. The rulers of islamic iran, from the 14th Century onwards, became very interested in the shahnameh. It almost became a necessary part of the equipment of a future ruler, to be given a shahnameh, which provided as a model for the kings of the present based on what had happened in the past. And of course, at the same time, it preserved of the ideas of iran as a country with an enormously long history. In the 19th Century, The V A began to collect evidence for World Architecture through photography. But of course, the Tile Work monuments of isfahan presented a problem because photography is in black and white, and their patterns are based on colour. So it was the idea to get paintings made of the Tile Work in isfahan. This exhibition has given us the opportunity to show some of these larger paintings for the first time in a very long time where you have three of the samples of the Interior Domes of isfahan have been raised on huge mounts. They are only triangular shapes, because the design was repeated around the dome. And so, in order to communicate it, you just needed one thin slice of it which lets you see the relationship between these thin triangles and a complete dome. The eighth part of the exhibition is devoted to royal patronage. What you see first is the section on robes of honour. Theyve been a huge motor for the production of luxury textiles in iran. In order to be a proper ruler, the ruler had to have very large stocks of luxury textiles. Because it was the custom that, when people came to court such as an ambassador or a vizier whos done a very good job for the ruler the ruler would present them with a special robe which would be placed over their shoulders. Robes of honour were either sold off because they were so valuable, or they were recycled into other objects. Weve isolated two in The V A collection one of them with a very beautiful 17th Century Pattern of flowering plants. But it doesnt survive as a robe of honour, it survives as a type of orthodox textile that was used by Orthodox Bishops in the mass. And the other example is a robe which was sent to The V A by Naser Al Din Shah Qajar in 1876. So the ninth section of the exhibition is about the 19th Century. We call it the old and the new because the 19th Century is the tension between the kings who wanted to present themselves as glorious in the style of the iranian monarchs of the past. But they also had to deal with a very changed world. The section on the 19th Century includes two large oil paintings. One of them comes from the reign of Fath Ali Shah and its a portrait of the monarch by his court painter, and it shows the shah wearing the extensive jewellery on his equipment and clothes that was available to him because of the conquests of Nader Shah in india. Oil painting had come to iran probably in the 17th century for portraiture and decorative painting. So it came there as an inheritance from the past. During the 19th Century, there were a number of really interesting painters who emerged in iran and one of them was ismailjalayir. The painting that we have in the exhibition shows the harem of an important person. They are having tea on a balcony overlooking a park with very large trees. The portraits of the women their faces have an incredible stillness. I think whats happened is that Ismailjalayir Wouldnt have had access, and so hes been given photographs of them in order to create the painting. That sort of leads us through to the 20th Century and there, we show examples of the art of iran after the introduction of Art School Training in the western style in the 19405, and how iran in the 19605 and 705 developed a form of modernism that was in tune with international movements, but also had artists who were creating specifically iranian works of art. And now, its time to see some masterpieces of the modern period. Theres two really great and important stories to tell. One, of course, is how dynamic modernity was in iran in the mid 20th Century. Between the second World War and the iranian revolution, there was an incredible scene of arts within iran. You had many different Art Schools and academies, you had private galleries, you had, by the early � 50s, 700 newspapers, Public Television which was a very radical public Television Programme and you had biennales and Art Fairs and the shiraz persepolis festival. Within that period, there were lots of different voices, lots of different political voices. Clearly not everyone was monarchist, there were anti monarchists, marxists, socialists, islamicists, republicans, all working within this field and giving their own voice. So we wanted to represent that dynamic period of modernism, when iranian artists were really exploring different ways of expressing their own modernity. We have oil paintings, and sculpture, and photography. We have film, installation work, and animation. And over half our artists are women, so really creating a very dynamic voice. Within the era of modernism, its interesting to look at some of those key artists, all of whom are iconic today. So we can look at someone like Sirak Melkonian his work, veiled woman, won the first prize of the very first Tehran Biennal in 1958. He has explored Local Idioms and nuances, and his portrayal on these flat washes of colour of a woman emerging from a bathhouse in downtown tehran, looking at you sideways, really exemplifies the kind of exploration that artists were interested in doing then. The incredible thing is that there is this misnomer in western Art History that modernism was something that was invented in the west, and then exported like a good around the world. Whereas, in fact, in the kind of Transnational Modernisms that are being explored now, we re understand the story differently. And its great to have this moment to establish the huge variety of modernism within iran in the 20th Century. Iran positioned itself firmly on the global stage so we had artists that moved westward and looked, and reinvented, but we also had artists who looked eastward. And who more beautiful and more moving than sohrab sepehri, whos known as a poet, as well as a painter . Sohrab studied for two years injapan in the early � 60s, and also in china. And he came back to iran via india, where he studied there as Well Both in its painterly arts, but also in its spiritual meditation. And in this early work, we see that wonderful Eastern Brushstroke in one of these early renditions of the trees that sepehri became so well known for later on in his career. We can also look at the work of bahman mohasses. He was interested not in the hero, but in the antihero. And his figures often have a demonic feel and resonate with different power. This painting is really great its from the mid � 60s, and it shows a couple on a beach. Of course, we all know this had become very fashionable in the period, in the � 505 and � 60s where people would go up to the Caspian Sea for picnics and weekend stays. And Theres Something very beautiful about this scene with two men, on that leisurely lying in the sunshine. Its really startling that when you come to the modern and contemporary, you see something that we see throughout the decades which is that even though you have regime change, for want of a better word, you have a new political reality. What you still have is incredibly tenacious sense of iranian identity. And artists keep on exploring, reinventing, have a critical eye. And so when you come to this contemporary period, they are unafraid to do, you know, address issues such as gender or politics. And very often, the works test the boundaries of censorship and control. Its very clear here from, for example, rokni haerizadeh� s work, how he does that. The work itself is called the anniversary of the islamic republic. But when you look at this amazing painting, what are you seeing . You have Azadi Tower Which was formerly shahyad. And there you have people milling around, supposedly a day of feasting. But then there is a tightrope with a very precarious person walking across the scene. And there is a kind of carnal unpleasantness about the scene, with people eating Ice Creams and snacks. And somehow, you feel like everythings a little bit not as it seems. And then, we end with the beautiful animation by Avish Khebrehzadeh the white horses. She uses this ancient animal that we see from the earliest times represented in iranian art, the horse. Here we see them galloping, you hear the clopping of their feet. And then, the gong Signing Off and they race towards freedom. The land we know as iran has faced major challenges and change over the centuries. But the epic Iran Exhibition shows there is a cultural history stretching back 5,000 years, contributing to a national identity that connects iranians through the millennia. Hello there. Many of you will have had a dry start to the weekend. There is some sunshine around, the best of it arguably across eastern areas of the country, and a lovely end to the day, captured by Weather Watcher sue in wakefield in west yorkshire. Weve seen outbreaks of rain starting to form, some heavy showers crossing the midlands. Some of those downpours have been captured by our Weather Watchers as well. For example, look at this one a downpour crossing the skies of nuneaton captured by Weather Watcherjack. Right now, if anything the rain is getting a bit heavier, a bit more expansive as it makes its way across wales, the midlands, Northern Ireland and scotland. Slowly were starting to see that Rain Ease off across westernmost areas of Northern Ireland. So here it should be a reasonably dry start to the day on sunday, but otherwise many of us will see at least some rain during the day on sunday as these areas of rain continued to push their way eastwards. Now, the rain is going to get increasingly heavy late in the day across eastern areas of england, where the rain is going to really grind to a halt. And the amount of rain we see from place to place is going to vary quite a bit, but there will be a few areas that could pick up as much as 30 or a0 mm. There is a risk of seeing some localised Surface Water Flooding across the east. In many western areas, actually, the weather will improve for Sunday Afternoon with a bit more in the way of sunshine. Taking a look at the week ahead, well, its not a bad start to the week, with some sunny spells, some dry weather as well for many. However, later in the week, low pressure is going to be moving in and thats going to be bringing more of an autumnal feel to things, really, as it turns wet and increasingly windy as well. Mondays chart and into tuesday shows this ridge of high Pressure Building off the next atlantic system, and not completely dry. I mean, there will be one or two spots of Rain In East Anglia and south east england, a few showers in the north west, but predominantly monday is a dry day with some sunshine. 0ur Temperatures are high teens to low 20s, probably feeling just a little bit fresher than it has done over recent days, but not cold. 0n into tuesdays forecast, a few Mist And Fog patches to start the day. The winds really start to pick up for Northern Ireland and western scotland, where there could be a few showers. But again its mainly dry day, with some sunny spells, perhaps a bit of cloud developing across england and wales through the afternoon, top temperatures about 21 celsius. But heading deeper into the week, low pressure is set to move in off the atlantic, this bringing rain to all areas and increasingly strong winds. We will have some autumnal gales later in the week. Good morning. 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