Peter Kennard @ The Whitechapel Gallery
23rd July 2024 – 19th Jan 2025
Archive of Dissent
The art of the photomontage and political dissent in the UK are inextricably linked with the works of Peter Kennard. At the height of the CND nuclear disarmament movement in the 1980’s, Kennard’s work could be seen in abundance, held aloft at rallies. The message cleverly crafted and brutally blunt, there was never any doubt about the artist’s intention.
It isn’t often that one goes to an exhibition knowing exactly what you’re about to see and still marvel at it. Peter Kennard’s exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, is just that. Smaller in scale than the major retrospective held at the Imperial War Museum in 2015, but it still delights.
Kennard has been producing photomontages for over fifty years and the targets vary but as he says, “My art erupts from outrage at the fact that the search for financial profit rules every nook and cranny of our society. Profit masks poverty, racism, war, climate catastrophe and on and on…” and this is key to the effectiveness of Kennard’s work, he rarely loses sight of the root causes of the suffering and destruction.
Kennard has tried to expand his work to include installation pieces and these perhaps are the least successful aspects of the exhibition. The installations detract from the images they employ. Kennard’s work needs to be seen in its purest form without distractions.
Below is a selection of some of the memorable photomontages.
‘The Anti-Nuclear Posters’
‘The Anti-G8 Posters’
In 2013 Britain hosted the G8 summit.
Other posters and works...
Nelson Mandela and Apartheid South Africa
The selling off of public utilities
Julian Assange. Freedom of speech in tatters?
The collateral damage of the ‘markets’
‘The People’s University of the East End’ (2024)
Sited in the former Whitechapel library, this installation alludes to the learning that takes place in public spaces and the activism that was born in those places. Arranged as placards in a demonstration, it shows the range of Kennard’s images.
This was quite an interesting deconstruction of the photomontage. Images of weapons manufacturer and oil giants are projected on to faces of people.
In a sense the layering of images using projected light.
The stack of papers with Kennard’s images, free to visitors. A reminder that before the days of the internet, dissemination of activist news was done through the distribution of free papers.
This exhibition was a timely reminder that the problems facing us have been with us for quite some time and that maybe the solution to those problems doesn’t rely on continuation of the current economic and power structures. Excellent.