Peter Kennard
Visual Dissent
50 years of hard-hitting protest art from Britain’s foremost political artist
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.
Peter Kennard is Professor of Political Art at the Royal College of Art. He is the author of Images for End of Century: Photomontages Equations (Pluto, 1999). In 2015, the Imperial War Museum hosted a year long retrospective of his work Peter Kennard: Unofficial War Artist. He has published numerous art monographs, and contributed his visuals to publications, magazines and news stories in the press.
'These images refuse to be forgotten ... they remind us of the need to speak out in protest, the protests of the dead and the living'
- John Berger'This art is a a jolt of electricity. A shot in the arm. A kick up the backside. You know what? It’s a wake-up call'
- Jarvis Cocker'Britain's most important political artist'
- The Guardian'I take my hat off to you Sir'
- Banksy'Art cannot change the world but while Kennard is still working, there is at least hope'
- Laura Cumming, The Observer'Kennard sees the skull beneath the skin all right: an area dominated by greed, indifference, ruthlessness, naked force against the powerless; the holy grail of the Big Buck'
- Harold Pinter'In its form and power, Peter Kennard's art ranks among the most important in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His pictures brilliantly evoke the faces that cry out from the silent war'
- John Pilger, The Guardian'Peter Kennard's work is a harrowing x-ray of the shadow side of the world. He perfectly captures the brutal asymmetries of our age: heavy weaponry trained on broken people, all-seeing technologies and disappearing identities, perpetually exhaling industry and an asphyxiating planet'
- Naomi Klein'Peter Kennard's work is redolent of the best anti-war imagery of Goya, it is iconic in our movement and beyond'
- Kate Hudson, General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)Series Preface
Preface
1. Feminist Futures: A Conditional Paeon for the Anything-Digital
2. Scale, Subject and Stories: Unreal Objects
3. Bland Ambition? Automation's Missing Visions
4. Driving at the Anthropocene, or, Let's Get Out of Here: How?
5. Technological Feminism and Digital Futures
Bibliography
200mm x 240mm