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“Peter Kennard's work is haunting. Eschewing words, it insists upon not being forgotten. He is a master of the medium of photomontage. His images are impossible to convey with words because of their unmistakable visual texture, pure and dirty, suggesting a strange amalgam of X-ray, satellite image and slag. The future - which for so long was a mine of gory rhetoric for those holding power - today depends upon those who insist upon looking beyond their lifetime. And to do this we have to scrutinise, like Peter Kennard, our nightmares and suppressed hopes. His art cannot be ignored.”
– John Berger, The Guardian
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Peter KENNARD
Kent State, 1970Photomontage – Dyeline print152 x 101.5 cm -
‘Photomontages of Dissent’, Richard Saltoun Gallery’s first presentation of work by Peter KENNARD, features unique photomontages that span the course of the renowned political artist’s career, from the early 1970s to those made over the last few years. While the works comment on political issues prominent in the 1970s, from nuclear disarmament to the collapse of the NHS, their underlying concerns regarding peace, justice and equality remain as relevant today as ever.
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Video created on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Art Against War: Peter Kennard and the CND Movement’ at Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, 2018
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“Peter Kennard has been producing his politically radical photomontages for 50 years. We need people who carry on fighting the good fight. People who keep their focus despite the changing cultural and political landscape. The message is consistent – the message is clear – the message is true. The message is uncompromising, brutal and hard-hitting – but also very beautiful, it’s beautiful because it wants to keep us alive. It’s a jolt of electricity. A shot in the arm. A kick up the backside. You know what? It’s a wake-up call.”
– Jarvis Cocker
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Photograpgh of Peter Kennard's photomontage street exhibition, London, 1980
While originally trained in painting, Kennard turned to photomontage in the 1970s following his participation in demonstrations against the Vietnam War. Inspired by the pioneering German visual artist John Heartfield, who utilised his art as a political weapon, Kennard sought new ways to work beyond painting, using images from newspapers, magazines and his own photographs, tearing them up and reconstructing them as an alternative ‘truth’ or vehicle to look at the world critically. Several of these original images, with noticeable marks and edges handled directly by the artist, are on view as part of this online display – many shown together for the first time.
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“Kennard sees the skull beneath the skin all right: an area dominated by greed, indifference, ruthlessness, naked force against the powerless; the Holy Grail of the Big Buck. He weaves a brilliant and ghastly tapestry about power, desolation, destruction, death and ‘the market’. Kennard forces us to inhabit a grotesque and oppressive prison from which there is no escape. The prisoner is the human spirit, chained, shackled, wasted, reduced, throttled.”
– Harold Pinter
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Visual Dissent, a fully illustrated anthology of key images by Peter Kennard, is now available on the artist’s website. The book centres around Kennard’s images, photomontages and illustrations that span issues including the Israel/Palestine conflict, anti-nuclear demonstrations, torture, climate change and more. Highlighting Kennard’s extraordinary contribution to political art over the last 50 years, the publication provides important insights into Kennard’s approach to his work, the genesis of his images and the various techniques employed.
Signed copies available here.
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Peter KENNARD
Mandela, 1990Photomontage - Gelatin silver prints and wood on card43 x 55 cm -
‘Peter Kennard’s work is a harrowing x-ray of the shadow side of the world that perfectly captures the brutal asymmetries of our age: heavy weaponry trained on broken people, all-seeing technologies and disappearing identities, perpetually exhaling Industry and an asphyxiating planet.’
- NAOMI KLEIN
Peter Kennard: Photomontages of Dissent
Past viewing_room
