The powerful photography of Peter Kennard and the Art of Protest
By Dave Kellaway
Even if you have never been on a demonstration against imperialist war or nuclear weapons, it is likely that you have seen one of Peter Kennard’s hard-hitting photomontages. They have illustrated posters, books, newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets of the labour and progressive movement. If you are old enough to remember the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) or anti-Cruise Missiles demonstrations, this show will take you down memory lane. Although Kennard produced a lot of work for the anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons campaigns, he designed montages for all the big issues taken up by the Labour movement in the last five decades. You will find striking images for the miners’ strikes, anti-apartheid posters, Vietnam solidarity material, and a clever image denouncing what the US and British state have done to Julian Assange.
The gallery introduction neatly summarises Kennard’s work:
“Inspired by the work of John Heartfield (1891–1968), who pioneered montage as a political tool in the 1930s, Kennard’s montages deconstruct familiar and ubiquitous images and reimagine them through different formats and scales of publication. The works not only serve to expose the relationship between power, capital, war, and the destruction of planet Earth but also ‘to show new possibilities emerging from the cracks and splinters of the old reality“.
Heartfield did the famous photomontage agitprop against Hitler in Germany, showing the Nazis’ links to German capitalists.
Kennard is one of the few artists who have carried on this tradition. Other proponents include feminists (see Guerrilla Girls) who have deconstructed sexist images and anti-corporate or ecological activists who have altered adverts to subvert their messages. The Brandalism group is an example of the latter.
In this show, we see all the old favourites:
- The cruise missiles inserted into the Constable Haywain picture,
- The egg timer with the imperialist military skull at the top and the Palestinian flag at the bottom,
- The montage of the British soldier loading the rubber bullet in his gun alongside the image of a wounded, terrified Irish demonstrator,
- The CND symbol or clenched fist breaking the missiles,
- The Earth from space topped by fossil fuel power stations,
- A soldier’s shadow across a Ukrainian flag.
Politically, Kennard has always worked with the broad movements and actively collaborated with non-Stalinist left groups. The show includes his work for the Workers Press (WRP paper) and Socialist Challenge (IMG paper). He was able to collaborate with Ken Livingstone and the leadership of the GLC in its ‘left’ heyday. His work criticised the bureaucratised dictatorships of the East as much as the US or British imperialists.
I was particularly impressed by his more recent installations that are on show here. He uses pages from the Financial Times – the bosses’ serious newspaper – as a background to charcoal images of people from the global south (World Markets), or he projects a backlit repertoire of his iconic images through the pink pages. Another installation, entitled Boardroom, uses light, glass, and projection to deconstruct the medium of photomontage. He places a line of business cards from top companies like SERCO along the light source. BP and Shell are also featured. As a Marxist, he wants to show how the markets, boardrooms, and share prices mask a reality of exploitation, extractivism, and global inequality.
It is rare to find such a committed artist. Undoubtedly, he could have made a lot of money in the world of advertising or graphic design, but he has primarily remained committed to producing work that can make people think that another world is possible. This exhibition also reflects the way he sees his art as relating to ordinary people. It is free, and there are free newspaper copies of his greatest hits that you can take home or pin up in your workplace, community hall, or college.
Let us leave Peter Kennard with the last word on his work:
“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… Archive of Dissent brings together fifty years of work that all attempt to express that anger by ripping through the mask by cutting, tearing, montaging, and juxtaposing imagery that we are all bombarded with daily. It shows what lies behind the mask: the victims, the resistance, the human communality saying ‘no’ to corporate and state power. It rails at the waste of lives caused by the trillions spent on manufacturing weapons and the vast profits made by arms companies.”
P.S. It is well worth catching another free exhibition on at the same time at the Whitechapel. Dominique White, a Black artist and winner of the Max Mara Woman Artist of the Year, has an exhibition called Deadweight, which shows large-scale sculptures of wood and iron inspired by shipwrecks and black people’s connection to the sea. There is a short video that explains her collaboration with Italian artists and specialists and outlines her vision.
- Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent is open Tuesdays to Sundays at the Whitechapel Gallery in London until 19th January 2025.
- Dave Kellaway is on the Editorial Board of Anti*Capitalist Resistance, a member of Socialist Resistance, a member of Hackney and Stoke Newington Labour Party.
- This article was originally published by Anti*Capitalist Resistance on 31st July 202
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