Peter Kennard’s ‘Unofficial War Artist’ (Photo: flickr/ KateR)
Peter Kennard’s Archive of Dissent at Whitechapel Gallery in east London is one of the most extensive displays of his work to date.
The gallery is housed in a historic library once known as the “People’s University of the East End”.
Kennard wanted the exhibition to carry on the radical tradition of learning, educating, campaigning and organising.
Inside is an archive of prints, spanning Kennard’s 50-year career as an artist.
His work serves as a comprehensive archive of capitalism and the resistance to it. But this isn’t a detached look at society—Kennard’s work fizzes with a critique of the horrors of society.
War is a central theme. Kennard’s work with Stop the War and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament both feature. Also included are pieces covering the Iraq War, and more contemporary pieces focusing on Ukraine and Palestine.
Police violence, Thatcherism and fossil fuel giants are also skewered in the exhibition.
Tightly packed newspapers filled the space under the archive. Each sheet contains a different print of the artist—there are some 15,000 papers free for visitors to take.
This means you can leave a free exhibition with a free artwork, either for framing or flyposting. It serves to pose a radical challenge to consumerist ideology and exclusivity within the art world.
In pieces such as Haywain with Cruise Missiles, produced in 1980, you can see a glimpse of his work before the more commonly digital and reproduced formats.
The most startling work in the exhibition is his 2023 piece Double Exposure, made in collaboration with artist Nigel Brown.
It features a wall of images printed on the pages of the Financial Times newspaper.
The work itself reveals part of Kennard’s process. Double exposure is a photographic technique which overlays images, similarly to Kennard’s photo montage technique, to create one new whole.
It’s also a reference to a double exposure of the capitalist system, showcasing how the economics represented by the Financial Times pages hides horrors like torture, war and famine.
The back lighting reveals prints, flashing off and on, hiding and again revealing the horrors behind them.
The lighting here is bright, jarring. It reveals horror and is reminiscent of torture techniques, or flashes of war. It is both horrifying and captivating.
What is really striking is Kennard’s work is not tailored for exhibition spaces and galleries. It is made for the streets, for protests, to change minds and protest horrors.
His work is guttural and clean cut. It is high art, street art and craft all at once.
Above all it is political, it is explicitly against war and oppression, and it is essential in a world hurtling down multiple paths towards catastrophe.
It is an essential exhibition to visit.
Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent is at the Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX. It runs until 19 Jan 2025. Free
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