Peter Kennard

Peter Kennard is an artist that uses the shocking images from miseries of the world to compile into photo montages in the aim of providing a story of the devastations that is going on in the world. He uses Ironic, and emotional content to draw in the audience and educate them; this is the first step to creating change. Kennard says that “The point of the photo montage is to show the causes of things rather than just the result. Hopefully if you show the causes, people will think about how they’re implicated in it.” He sees topics of poverty and adornment as being massively important, they are topics that people need to be aware of and so he continues to use them throughout his work. “Poverty is nor natural and inexorable – it’s not to do with increasing the world population but to do with human action and I try to make that clear through imagery. And that’s why the work looks crude and obviously constructed. It’s about oil disruption and the breaking of things, about trying to look into things under the surface.”

Kennard has been referred to as a social conscience due to the political element in his work and trying to speak out in the aid of morality and what he feels people need to be aware of, to stop the evils man is inflicting on the world. He says that he likes to think he “acts as an early warning sign” to make people understand; breaking through their corrupted minds of acceptance that “this is just the way it is” and that “it’s for the good of our country” he wants people to wake up and to prevent any further destruction and unnecessary death from happening in the world.

Kennard’s work is in on permanent exhibition in the Tate, London. He sees that not only through working in a gallery space but in the public sphere art becomes represented to a wider audience and as it becomes informal it applies to a larger portion of individuals. Generally speaking, through being out of the gallery setting it becomes more accessible to those other than the middle class who usually dominate the gallery space. By working with montage he can be direct in what he is representing or what issues he is putting across rather than with other mediums where the final outcome is not entirely known and so this method is quick at generating a response amongst its audience. But there is also a disadvantage to this method, in that, photo montages are commonly made, and with the technologies about and more of a wider understanding of how they work; people feel the images are easily made which lowers the importance of the meaning by attention fixated on the product. People see the supposed “simple” technique as making the image seem naive.

For chance to happen, Kennard believes that people need to speak out. They need to discover their voice and that their personal opinion is as important as the next person. He tries to encourage this through his work, he says that his work “tries to voice to those who are increasingly marginalised and silenced. It’s not art about art, its art about the world; it’s trying to bring the outside in, the world into the gallery.

The work that I am going to talk about is his book @Earth which is truly fascinating. It is a book that was published May this year, 2011. It is based on the photo montages that Kennard has produced in the 40 years of his career as an artist. The book is an essay purely made up of images – no writing- to provide a vision of what is happening in the world; to enrage the individual reading it, to provide a look into the world that Pete Kennard sees and to provoke that individuals concern and appetite for fighting for change to take place, to stop this devastation. The essay begins with an insight into the realities of the condition of the world, to what our industrious technologies are doing to it and to the worlds disadvantaged people, then onto the faceless authorities and their perceived powers in the world, spying on and controlling every move we make, infecting society with fear and lies through propaganda, praying on the weak and damaged people to be the puppets in their madness without concern for their welfare or for the health of the world in which we live in. They provide medals as an appreciation of their honour with disregard to the lives that have ended or have been ruined as a result of their forced actions upon the oppositional. They leave their mark on the destroyed landscapes and homelands of the innocent. They are the enemy? Who is really the enemy? Through this power hungry act for money, money represented through oil, power represented though weapons, but who is being left behind? The poor are suffering at the hands of greed. Lives are being gambled with, the earth is being gambled with, we need to open our eyes and look for this. Kennard wants the audience to understand his frustrations and the frustrations of the people who are ignored, whose voices are never heard. What will happen to our world if we don’t take action now? We need to put a stop to this! Nuclear warfare and its glorification, needs to be ended before it’s too late, but the clock is ticking, we only have a matter of time. We do have the power to rise up.

Kennard made this book accessible to as many people as he felt possible by providing a book with no words in it meant that people of every language could read and understand it, Of course the ‘@’ symbol is also worldly known and he felt that the symbol would relate heavily to the younger audience especially which he felt was important as the younger generations actions and views will shape the world of the future. He discussed this in an interview where he said “the idea is to bring it to as wide an audience as possible and especially to young people, which is the generation that is growing up that, is going to change the world. And computer symbols are understood universally by young people, hence calling it @earth.” Only a few weeks ago I went to a lecture given by Peter Kennard where he spoke about his book, I asked him after the lecture if and how he felt his book can provide change in the world. He answered, “I intend to create awareness amongst its audience”, the actions are left up to the viewers but he wanted to provide them with strong images in the hope of changing the way they think about the world. Though this book has only been out only six months to the date that I am writing this essay, the book has had a wide coverage of recognition and applause. Naomi Klein commented that "This book 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. If there's a word that's worth a thousand pictures, it's @earth." Banksy said that: “I take my hat off to you sir, @earth looks great”.