Peter Kennard’s Art: A Retrospective

Even as he hangs his work for a retrospective at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, Peter Kennard can’t help but feel a sense of failure. “Archive of Dissent” celebrates 50 years of artistry by the UK’s foremost political artist, yet Kennard admits, “there’s a sense of failure in making work like this.” However, he rallies by saying, “but that is also the impetus to go on making it.”

Kennard is renowned for some of the most powerful images of protest, resistance, and dissent over the past half-century. Radicalized by the events of 1968 and the Vietnam war protests, he started creating photomontages in the early 70s. His work has supported a range of left-wing causes, human rights groups, and environmental concerns, including CND, Amnesty International, the Stop the War coalition, and the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Esteemed voices have praised his work. Naomi Klein said it “perfectly captures the brutal asymmetries of our age.” John Berger called him a “master of the medium of photomontage,” while Harold Pinter remarked, “Kennard sees the skull beneath the skin alright.” John Pilger considered his art among the most important of the late twentieth century.

Despite these accolades, Kennard feels a sense of inadequacy. Though proud of his work with groups like CND, the ultimate goals have not been fully achieved. “All these things are still there or more of them,” he explains. And despite his campaigning against Trident, “we are now spending £125bn on reconditioning it.” He muses that the world is only getting “madder.”

“Art doesn’t save the world,” he says, “but a lot of work I’ve done has been for groups like CND or Amnesty, and in that sense, it can have an effect because it’s allied to a group of people actually trying to do something.”

Seeing the homespun qualities of his original artworks reminds us of a different era—before deep fakes, AI, Photoshop, and digitization. He recalls visiting Hamleys’ “toy missile department” to buy a plastic prop for Broken Missile, which he later smashed and impaled on a cardboard CND logo. “It’s very crude,” he notes, “which I quite like because I think that encourages people to make their own.”

For Protest and Survive, where a skeleton reads a government leaflet on nuclear attack guidelines, he had to paint out the hands of students holding the bones. “Skeletons don’t usually read,” he adds drily.

Initially inspired by painters like Francis Bacon and David Bomberg, Kennard’s political awakening during Vietnam war protests led him to create images reflecting those turbulent times. He was attracted to the disruptive energies of photomontage, inspired by radical German antecedents where art and politics converged naturally.

“It wasn’t a decision; it just felt quite natural to start making work that way,” he says. Discovering artists like Hannah Höch and John Heartfield showed him the power of montage and collage.

Kennard believes photomontage can reveal deeper meanings. “If you put two photos together, you create another meaning of what’s underneath,” he says. “What’s underneath is not coming through loudly enough, so I’m using those photographs to tell it.”

Throughout his career, Kennard’s aim was always to engage viewers actively rather than passively consume his work. “We’re bombarded by verbal opinions all the time. We need images to get through, especially to young people who aren’t going to sit down and read Chomsky or whatever. But they might see an image and think about it.”

He rejects the notion that his work is just propaganda. “I’m not telling people what to do. I’m not saying vote Labour or something, just presenting things that will get people to think critically,” he explains.

His iconography of protest is so potent that it has been endlessly adopted and reproduced, appearing on everything from banners to T-shirts. “I don’t mind if you put them on T-shirts; it’s important to get the work out. Putting it out in the world is as important as making the work.”

Recalling his Crushed Missile montage, he cherishes the idea that his work encourages DIY versions in papier-mâché. “One of the things with montage is to do something simple enough that people can get it quickly. In the street, it’s a shock to see a poster that’s not selling garbage but is actually saying, stop nuclear weapons or climate disaster.”

Since the late 1980s, Kennard has also created unique installations for galleries. While digitization became popular, he leaned toward more hands-on artistic methods. “I’m the awkward squad,” he says. At the Whitechapel, he frets over the lighting for Double Exposure, where his montages appear through pages of Financial Times market data.

“These are almost like deconstructing montage, which goes back to Brecht’s ideas of revealing the making of a play. It shows the process, inviting people to think and create their own.”

Kennard sees continuity in the quality of all his work, whether for galleries or wider audiences. “The work should be strong enough to go into a gallery and out in newspapers and magazines.”

A grid of 24 images from his World Markets series, showing faces drawn over financial pages, highlights the humanity often overshadowed by financial data. “Beyond the serried ranks of stocks and shares, there’s humanity, which is poverty-stricken, a lot of humanity.”

He reflects on the common theme of his work. “It’s always about inhumanity and representing it to make people think. The brutality in people’s lives, the power relations affecting people, and the madness of profits from arms sales.”

Kennard’s ultimate message remains clear: “The waste of capitalism, both human and financial. But I can’t put it in words. That’s why I do it.”

Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent is at the Whitechapel Gallery until January 2025

Source: The Guardian