Peter Kennard is outraged, irate and angry. Because when the British artist and professor of political art looks at the world around him, he sees nothing but injustice, greed, violence and pain.
But rather than shouting pointlessly about it or collapsing into a powerless heap like the rest of us, he channels his ire into art. His stark photomontages have been a visual diary of corporate greed and state warfare for decades. Here at the Whitechapel, posters from throughout his career attack nuclear proliferation, the Gulf War, Thatcher, British imperialism, Nato’s involvement in Yugoslavia, privatisation and countless other charged, sensitive, volatile topics.
His best work is instantly recognisable: minimal, funny, shocking, filled with skulls and gas masks and bombs and barbed wire. Peace symbols disarm warheads, the earth wears a gas mask, hands crush missiles. Kennard is screamingly, heatedly anti-war, anti-nuclear, anti-imperial.
These vicious, confrontational images represent the despair of the powerless.
The same images appear repeatedly – gas masks and clocks and bombs – but here updated in a recent installation with Palestinian flags, their red running like blood.
The final installation combines his original montages with newspapers in which they were reprinted. This is art for dissemination, messages to be spread, not something pretty for your wall.
Kennard’s influence today is obvious and widespread, and his visual language has been latched onto by countless younger, street-ier artists, especially Banksy. But Kennard’s points are clearer, more pointed and powerful than anyone who has come after him, yes, especially murky, vacuous Banksy.
Two older couples were sat at a table in the show on my visit, debating Kennard's work, talking about Israel and Palestine, nuclear armageddon. One of them said ‘but has he achieved any of his aims, has anything changed?’
The answer’s no. All of his targets still stand. I remain cynically unconvinced that this art makes any tangible difference to the issues it tangles with. Are the world’s nuclear powers being persuaded to disarm by a collage? The evidence is pretty clear that they couldn't give less of a shit what some artist thinks of them.
Instead, I think this work’s power is as a symbol: these vicious, angry, confrontational images represent the despair of people who feel powerless. They’re like a focal point to help direct frustration, a narrowing of energies towards specific targets, and more than anything, they’re a document of the fact that not everyone agrees, not everyone is ok with all this greed and violence. There are dissenting voices, and this is them screaming to be heard.
