'UKRAINE 2022’ BY PETER KENNARD IS MADE IN COLLABORATION WITH THE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES, ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART WHERE HE IS PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ART, AND RICHARD SALTOUN GALLERY.

ALL PROCEEDS GOING TO THE RED CROSS UKRAINE CRISIS APPEAL.

Throughout the war Red Cross teams have been continuously working around the clock to get critical care to those who need it most. With ongoing violence, an enormous number of people urgently need help right now.

'Ukraine 2022' are six limited edition prints by Peter Kennard, made in collaboration with the Richard Saltoun Gallery and The Royal College of Art.

100% of the proceeds go to the Red Cross Emergency Ukraine Appeal. Prints are still available, almost £10,000 raised so far.

Link to to see details and buy prints

'A powerful statement and contribution in the face of the horrific events taking place in Ukraine'. NeilMcConnon,Director,International Partnerships, Tate Gallery

PETER KENNARD: VISUAL DISSENT

Peter Kennard Visual Dissent, published by Pluto Press

“This fully illustrated anthology showcases key images from Peter Kennard's work as Britain's foremost political artist over the last fifty years.

The book centres around Kennard's images, photomontages and illustrations from protests, year by year, which provoked public outrage; including Israel/Palestine protests, anti-nuclear protests, responses to austerity, climate destruction, and more. Each image is accompanied by captions detailing not only the events in question, but Kennard's approach to the work, including the genesis of the images and the techniques employed. 

Ultimately, the book highlights Kennard's extraordinary contribution to political art in the twenty-first century.” 

Signed copies available HERE

CODE RED. COP 26. Glasgow, November 2021

Statement by Peter Kennard for his exhibition  CODE RED  at Trongate 103, Glasgow 30th 0ct-19th Dec and at the Out of the Blue Drill Hall, Edinburgh 5th Nov-26th Nov. (a Street Level Photoworks exhibition to coincide with COP26).

In August this year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their report. Their findings, prepared by 234 scientists from 66 countries, warn that human activity has warmed the climate to a point that is unparalleled by anything in the last 2,000 years and that by 2019 atmospheric CO2 concentrations were higher than at anytime in at least 2 million years. The United Nations Secretary – General Antonio Guterres said the IPCC report was the ‘code red for humanity, the alarm bells are deafening and the evidence is irrefutable’. Hence the title for this installation which I’ve made specifically for the public space of Trongate 103 where the entrance to Street Level Photoworks is located.

The empty words issuing from the mouths of government leaders worldwide on the climate crisis continue to be backed up and supported by corporate profit for the good of share prices rather than human beings. The military-industrial complex is eating up the earth, spitting out the poorest people and waging war on them. The countries from which refugees flock have often been destroyed by the rapacious policies and weaponry of the very same countries that are refusing them entry. 

Through photomontage I’m trying to turn my outrage into image. In Code Red a recurring image I use and abuse is the beautiful photo of the whole earth taken by the Apollo astronauts in 1972. I cut it up, tear it, pummel it, add industrial chimneys, oil refineries exploding, polluted dust, gas masks, parched earth and floods. But I also show a montage of the earth surrounded by a clock, symbolising climate/nuclear destruction, its hands being pulled back from midnight by climate protesters.  There is also an image of planet earth  transformed into a seed sprouting a tree.  Photos can become entwined through photomontage so that the increasing destruction of the natural world can be envisaged and revealed not as inevitable but the result of human activity. The resulting montage can then be used a visual arm of the struggle for climate justice.

In a photomontage two clicks of the camera shutter can be brought together to reveal a third meaning. What is shown in Code Red is that oil is still flowing freely out of the ground, the chimneys are still belching out their pollutants and luxury yachts are growing longer by the day. E.M Forster’s dictum ‘only connect’ applies equally to making montages connecting the catastrophe that is climate destruction and its relationship to military power. They are both existentially and physically deeply connected. The U.S military is the largest single consumer of petroleum in the world. 

We’re living in a time of absolute emergency. We’re tottering through the rubble of the rampant free market. It’s a time in which images can open up a critical space that can jolt assumptions and break through denial. The poet Shelley wrote that ‘we must imagine what we know’. By picturing the result of extracting wealth out of the ground by every means possible I’m trying to picture what we know will happen if we don’t stop this plunder.

The Concept of History

Exhibition by Peter KENNARD

Richard Saltoun Gallery, 41 Dover Street, London W1S 4NS

8 March – 16 April ( Physical viewing, available to book:  

Email: info@richardsaltoun.com or Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7637 12) 

Press enquiries press@richardsaltoun.com   Sales niamh@richardsaltoun.com

Installation shots of exhibition on Richard Saltoun website: https://www.richardsaltoun.com/exhibitions/87-on-hannah-arendt-the-concept-of-history/installation_shots/

Richard Saltoun Gallery writes:

'The second exhibition in the gallery's year-long programme dedicated to Hannah Arendt, 'The Concept of History' features a solo presentation by Britain's most important political artist Peter Kennard.

The exhibition, the first physical show with Richard Saltoun Gallery since announcing Kennard's representation, highlights the extraordinary contribution of this politically informed artist over the past 50 years. 'The Concept of History' demonstrates Kennard's engagement with the course of history over the past five decades through three distinct bodies of work: his little-known STOP paintings from the 1960-70s informed by events such as the Paris student riots, The Prague Spring and Vietnam War protests; a large multi-part sculpture entitled Pallets from the 1990s that uses wooden pallets as a physical material and as a medium to host ghostly figurative imagery; and a new series of works on paper, intentionally titled (Untitled) 2020).'