Year-long exhibition of anti-war artists Peter Kennard opens in May.
LONDON, 2015-3-25 — /EPR Retail News/ — London’s recently refurbished Imperial War Museum in Waterloo is opening a new exhibition in May celebrating the work of one of Britain’s most important political artists. Peter Kennard: Unofficial War Artist (14th May 2015 – 30th May 2016) will examine the way Kennard’s images have become synonymous with political activism and inspired politically-aware artists from Mark Wallinger to Banksy. The free exhibition at IWM London will be the first major retrospective of his work charting a 50 year career featuring over 200 artworks and related items. The Imperial War Museum is located in Waterloo, close to the rich cultural attractions of the South Bank. To see what other London events are taking place in the area in May, visit LondonTown.com, London’s best website for visitors to the capital.
Kennard has been working since the late 1960s, when he abandoned painting and sought new forms of expression to bring art and politics together for a wider audience. In the 1980s, his work struck a chord during the polarised years of Cold War paranoia, culminating in his iconic transposition of Constable’s Haywain which he showed carrying Cruise Missiles. Hard-hitting montages such as this articulated fears inherent in British society as the East-West stand-off pushed the world towards nuclear catastrophe. Missiles, armaments and human skulls are all motifs of Kennard’s most ubiquitous works.
Kennard’s more recent Iraq War work, will be displayed alongside his seminal STOP paintings, begun when he was still an art student. These paintings reference events of the late 1960s such as the Paris student riots, the ‘Prague Spring’ and anti-Vietnam War protests and capture the febrile and disorientating atmosphere of the times. Artworks will be displayed in their various distributional forms ranging from posters, pamphlets, badges, placards and t-shirts, alongside the original works of art. These will underline how Kennard’s art is as reliant on its distribution and manifestation as its concept and creation. The display will also confirm Kennard’s status as an artistic outsider, determined to make work that exists outside the normal channels of the art world and that directly connects with the public.
The exhibition concludes with Boardroom, a brand new installation in which Kennard will look at the history of war and conflict from the mid- twentieth century to the present day. He will use many recurrent images from throughout his working life encompassing the entire gallery space. The images will be juxtaposed with numbers forming an audit of war both in terms of human and financial cost. Kennard intends this to be an evolving piece and will change the composition of the display at different points throughout the exhibition run. For more information, see LondonTown.com.
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