The Earl of Clancarty reviews 'Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent'

1990: 'Mandela' | Image courtesy of Whitechapel Gallery / © Peter Kennard

Earl of Clancarty

@NickClancarty

Peter Kennard tells the story of how, back in the 1980s, he surreptitiously mixed up postcards of his image Haywain with Cruise Missiles with the actual John Constable postcard in the stacks in the National Gallery shop. Kennard got a call from the National Gallery. Not, as he feared, because they wanted to sue him, but to ask his permission to show his version in a lecture on Constable – so famous had his own image become.

If, as could be argued, all artists are political – even if it is with a small ‘p’ – then Peter Kennard is political with a very big capital ‘P’ and, indeed to date, he is, rather remarkably, the UK’s one and only professor of political art, at the Royal College of Art. For Kennard, getting the work – and the accompanying message – out there, onto the streets, is as important as doing it. He is most well-known for his photomontages and all his work is created in reaction to world events and societal concerns, often as a result of commissions.

Two things immediately strike you about the new exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery. One that it is dense with imagery. This is an exhibition that could be five times the size or more – and if the work had been conventionally displayed then no doubt reviews would be proclaiming Kennard as a great British artist. But this is not the Kennard way. He is not into self-aggrandisement, but instead has arranged much of the work like a library archive, reflecting the Whitechapel Gallery extension’s own history – pre-gallery days – as a library itself and therefore making that connection with the sense of community which is clearly so important to the artist.

If the work had been conventionally displayed then no doubt reviews would be proclaiming Kennard as a great British artist

The second thing is how limited the colour palette is for work that is not restricted to the photographic: black and white, sepia and occasionally pink (courtesy of the Financial Times business pages). The aforementioned Haywain with Cruise Missiles, Kennard’s response to the stationing of cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common, is a rare exception. 

But the seriousness of the work and the bleakness of the overall effect should not get in the way of appreciating how witty and imaginative his work often is. From the scrunching of a cruise missile in one hand to the barbed wire tree at the centre of an urban landscape devastated by war, to the ripping up of the Financial Times’ business pages with one’s bare hands, the work is always in defence of the ordinary, common person in the face of war, poverty, big business and unrestrained capitalism – and of course most recently austerity and climate change.

The day I visited the exhibition was well-attended, mostly by young people. It is clear that there is an increasing interest in how art can be used in the way Kennard has been using it for decades. Not least because in the passing years the issues themselves have become more, not less critical. 

The Earl of Clancarty is a Crossbench peer

Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent
Curated by: Hannah Woods
Venue: Whitechapel Gallery until 19 January 2025

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