Luke Owain Boult speaks to kennardphillipps, an artistic collaboration between Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps, about the role of art in protest.
Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps, the minds behind a project rooted in the spirit of protest, begin by recounting kennardphillipps origins following the start of the Iraq War. “We met just before the invasion of Iraq, and after being on the enormous demo against the invasion we wanted to continue to protest the horror that was unleashed on the people of Iraq. As artists, we wanted to make visual work that would cut through the anodyne media images that were published and broadcast in the establishment media after the invasion. We were angry and horrified that Britain had backed the USA on the false premise of WMDs, and whatever skills we have as artists we wanted to use to cut through the lies and ensuing gung-ho atmosphere that always builds up when the West invades a country.”
I ask them how they explain what it is they do, and where they take inspiration from. “Our work uses digital printing as a basis for work that can go into galleries, books, magazines, placards and online. It can be in the form of photomontage, paintings, installations and workshops. By using documentary photos, we reconfigure the disparate images by joining photos that are kept separate in the media. This allows us to show the victims of capitalism in the same visual frame as the perpetrators of global violence and poverty and the struggles against oppression with those that perpetuate repression.
“It’s important that our work can communicate beyond the art world to a general audience. We are trying to respond to what’s happening NOW. Our work is a visual backup for protesters and dissenters against the state of things.”
As part of Diffusion, Cardiff’s international festival of photography, kennardphillipps will be exhibiting pieces that reflect the international status quo. I ask them about their plans for Diffusion: “Our installation The State Of The Nations is our most ambitious work to date. We’ve got a great space in an abandoned shop, next to Tesco on the high street. We’re hoping that as well as people coming specifically for Diffusion, people who are just passing by look in the window, see something that corresponds to their experience of living in 2017 and come in to look around.
“We’re trying to make an installation that maps some of the turbulence of the last couple of years: Brexit, Trump, massive migration forced on people by war and poverty, starvation in East Africa and Yemen, austerity cuts to infrastructure and social space and services in the UK, and the coming General Election. We want the work to be a focus for critical discussion, involvement and a cry out for action.”
“Numerous prints will be propped up by a giant red graph that will snake down the walls onto the floor of the space spiking back up to the ceiling,” they continue. “All our lives seem to be reduced to graphs that monitor: the profits of corporate profit, often rising up when war is waged, austerity bites, and the rich get richer, going down when there is peace and even a miniscule lowering of inequality for workers in a country that produces the goods we consume. We are taking hold of this graph and smashing it into images that reveal the workings of the financial powers that be and the terrible fate meted out to refugees from wars we create, from homelessness we create, from an NHS we are destroying and from the billions spent on weapons we create to destroy each other.”
With the arts targeted under austerity policies, I ask about the importance of festivals like Diffusion. “Photography and arts festivals are vital in bringing local practitioners and those outside together to share their work in a collective space created by the city for a local and international audience. Diffusion always picks a very topical theme, no more so than this year’s focus on ‘Revolution’. With the General Election coming up and the population being more politically engaged now than in decades, there is now more need than ever for festivals like Diffusion which provide essential new space for public debate.”
State Of The Nations, Diffusion: International Festival Of Photography, Wood Street, Cardiff, throughout May. Info: www.diffusionfestival.org