August 6, 2019 by ataf Blogs 0

Peter Kennard’s gallery takeover

Peter Kennard’s gallery takeover


We are thrilled to announce that artist Peter Kennard will be taking over an entire gallery at the 2019 Art the Arms Fair exhibition. His work will be exhibited at the AMP Gallery at 1 Acorn Parade in Peckham (12 – 8pm weekdays & 10am – 8pm at the weekend, 3 – 13 September).

Kennard told Art the Arms Fair:

“I have been making anti-war art in London, where I was born, for 50 years. I am horrified that every 2 years the Excel Centre is stuffed to the rafters with weapons of death and destruction at the London Arms Fair. The delegates (arms dealers) come from repressive regimes from around the world, including Saudi Arabia which is killing civilians in Yemen courtesy of Britain’s biggest arms company, BAE systems. I’m pleased to show my work as part of the response against this obscene arms fair. Arms companies expand globally, but then so too does the resistance.

‘Medals Disarm Fair’: Art by Peter Kennard displayed at Art the Arms Fair 2019

“My exhibition at Amp consists of painting in oil and pigment ink on canvas. Each canvas is three metres high by 1 metre wide. They are shown leaning against the walls like lines of falling tombstones. Each one depicts a medal in which the ribbon has become a frayed, torn and ripped flag. Instead of a shiny medal on the end of a ribbon is an image of a victim of imperial violence, a pile of rubble, a helmet marked up by a soldier with his number of kills, or the crosshairs of a smart bomb with its ‘collateral damage’. No separation is guarded more forcefully than the line drawn between the venerated medals of war, and the victims of an invading army’s violence.”

Peter Kennard was born in London in 1949 and lives and works in Hackney, East London. He studied at the Slade and the Royal College of Art. His work has been at the cutting edge of political art since his work protesting the Vietnam War in 1968. His photomontages, installations and paintings are known globally, gaining exposure in galleries, on the streets, in newspapers, magazines, posters and books.

In recent years his work has been included in many group exhibitions, including ‘Media Burn’, Tate Modern; ‘Rude Britannia’, Tate Britain, ‘Forms of Resistance’, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and solo exhibitions including ‘At Earth’ in Raven Row, London, to coincide with the publication of his book @earth, Tate Publishing, 2011.

His work is in many public collections including (in the UK) the Tate, Victoria and Albert Museum, Imperial War Museum, Science Museum, British Council and the Arts Council Collection.

His work has been written about across a wide spectrum, including Banksy, “I take my hat off to you, Sir”; Harold Pinter, “Kennard sees the skull beneath the skin all right”; and John Berger, “Peter Kennard’s work is haunting. Eschewing words, it insists on not being forgotten. He is a master of the medium of photomontage.”

His book ‘Peter Kennard: Visual Dissent’ will be published by Pluto Press on August 20th 2019.

He is Professor of Political Art at the Royal College of Art, London.

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