Peter Kennard once said that ‘art in itself doesn’t change anything, but when it’s aligned to a political movement, it becomes its visual arm’. For more than five decades he has been using photomontage as a medium for expressing incisive political commentary on global issues from apartheid to the ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine. This exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London presents an ‘archive’ of Kennard’s dissenting images alongside the materials in which they have featured, such as newspapers, magazine and books (23 July–19 January 2025). Highlights on display include his overlaying of the much-loved John Constable painting The Hay Wain (1821) with images of cruise missiles in a work made in 1980 in support of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Find out more from the Whitechapel Gallery’s website.
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Mandela (1990), Peter Kennard. Courtesy the artist and Richard Saltoun Gallery; © the artist
Sub-Trump (2018), Peter Kennard. Courtesy the artist and Richard Saltoun Gallery; © the artist
Thatcher Unmasked (1986), Peter Kennard. A/Political Collection. Courtesy and © the artist