MK: People talk about the importance of culture on politics and how we live. You cannot directly change the political system, but do you think you can change perceptions?

PK: People do think critically about the world through because they can see that the images they get in the news and in newspapers transformed. Separate images connected up to give meaning to them, to show how things connect in the world.

MK: Is that specifically photomontage?

PK:With photomontage you’ve got actual images of things that happened – someone took that image and so it actually happened in the world and so by putting it with other images you can then create the connections to show how the world is actually put together because in the media, we see everything disconnected – the adverts, the news stories – everything is disconnected all over the place. Whereas by putting them together you can then show that there is a linkage.

MK: You are often accused of making propaganda rather art. Is there a difference?

PK: Propaganda is actually putting things together and then from that the person looking at it is supposed to act in a certain way – join a certain party, do a certain thing or buy a certain thing adverts are propaganda in that sense. Whereas with my work it is not telling them what to do it’s allowing to think about what actually is. So it doesn’t tell them how to act on seeing the image, it just lets them think about the state of the world and their own position in it, but it doesn’t tell them to join anything or do anything in particular.

MK: You teach at the Royal Collage of Art, how political are students these days? Are the students more political than they have ever been?

PK: Yeah. I think in the past few rather than people being very into irony and very cynical, people are trying to work out how they relate as individual to the world because the world is impinging on our lives so much – we can’t deny it anymore that there is a crisis going on in the world, so it is impinging on the world they do. It doesn’t mean they do very direct images about it, but there is certainly that anxiety about how to live and what to do in the world is coming through in the work.

MK: Is political art just telling someone how to think? Is it always so direct and didactic?

PK: I go from making very direct work when the situation seems to demand it, to making subtle like the FACE paintings which are much more quiet and about people being silenced but not in an obvious – it’s the actual darkness of the image that gets the point across. Then there is the direct stuff against the war in Iraq.

MK: You had your piece pulled by Orange when it was to be projected onto a building because it wasn’t suitable for “grandmothers and small children”. You call the corporations “the Medici’s of today”, what kind of stranglehold do corporations have on what art is seen in public spaces?

PK: All big shows now in galleries have to be sponsored because there isn’t enough public money going in so they have to sponsor them. The sponsor wants to get an image across that tally’s in with their company so they like edgy Damien Hirst type things which aren’t specific but if you’re politically specific in what you do it’s very difficult to get sponsorship and then it’s very difficult to get a big public exhibition so it does have a knock-on affect sponsorship. It is much more quiet and insidious than censorship but it means that certain things don’t get seen. So there is a façade that they are encouraging dissent but when it becomes too serious they cut it off.

MK: Do you think that blunts any artistic dissent because it has to be sponsored?

PK: Well people work outside the system – they make their own spaces, they work collectively, they work in the street, and they work in smaller spaces. So there are lots of different ways to get work out. And there are lots of people working collobatively – I’ve been working a lot collaborativelyt with young artists like Cat Picton-Phillips on the work on Iraq we worked together. So get people from different generations joining together making work, which allows different points of view and you can find ways to work outside the established art system as well as working inside them. I think one should work in as many places as possible.

MK: Hasn’t political art always been marginalized? Hasn’t it always been dangerous to the establishment, or did they have more of a hold on it?

PK: No, it’s always been like that. This century, very political work is being kept under coers – a lot for really good work is only allowed to come when the person is dead and the issues they are dealing with are over. It’s not new but its more powerful now in the sense that private money is so vital to the art world now that it’s really difficult to work without it.

MK: Is the solution for the government to put a lot more money in public funded works?

PK: People get around it by working for difficult audiences. Its difficult because you need money for this, you need money for printing etc.

MK: There is a demand for it now isn’t there? You’ve been in the political art game for a long time, do you feel like there is more of a demand for it now, like the 1970s and 1980s?

PK: Yeah, I think young people are looking for images that break through the corporate smoothness and stranglehold of the corporate image and the corporatrions are aware of that so they employ graffiti artists and people to mess up their images and try to produce something that has street cred so they take anything that looks a bit radical, they take it in all the time and take out its specific political edge and turn it into style – that happens all the time because they want to get to that young audience but they want to get it in a way that isn’t politically specific.

MK: Do you think that the superficial way that PR companies work especially that now the world is in a crisis, reality and fantasy is colliding head on so people are looking for something that reflects the world they see around them?

PK: Yeah that will be gritty…

MK: And tally with what they are seeing.

PK: Even in Hollywood it is failing – the summer block blusters didn’t do well. And the films that are doing better are those that have some questioning of political reality. People don’t just sit there and get fed all this crap, they want something that relates to what they know is going on in the world. So it goes in waves and now, especially after the war in Iraq, people don’t believe a word of what politicians are telling so they want other voices and other forms of expression.

MK: Is your work influenced by academic political thought?

PK: Yeah. It’s been influenced by writers and journalists like John Pilger – people that actually do put things together in their writing, and Chomsky.

MK: I have noticed, especially Chomsky, juxtaposes a fact and then a quote together which is the same kind of method that you use.

PK: Yes. Chomsky deconstructed all the information that is coming in from the press and government reports and by putting it together through his mind, you can see the actual truth of what’s going on and in a way that is what I am doing with images is juxtaposing things and trying to put them together to show some of the realities underneath, like pulling apart a veil of smoothness.

MK: Who would you say are the best young political artists around now, we all know about Banksy…

PK: Banksy has shown that there is a way to work outside the art system. I think there is a lot being done by young people in collectives like Indymedia who are actually using video and film and recording events and putting it out on the net – there is a lot of work being produced that way.

MK: There’s Adbusters too, and Bulb of course…

PK: Oh yes. The great new innovative magazine!

MK: I think, especially with my friends, they are not versed with political discourse and book but are really influence by art, but apart from Banksy there doesn’t seem to be anyone…

PK: But most of the stuff that is big in the art world is not overtly political. There are the graffiti artists who are showing in galleries stuff they do outside the gallery. Younger artists are much more flexible now – they work in video, film, paint, print and work in different ways.

MK: Is there a lot happening in the Third World?

PK: There’s some very strong work coming out of Africa and Latin America, using very basic materials to create very strong images about the situation of people – like a way of documenting peoples lives but done with great flair and using a lot of different materials.

MK: You spent a long time doing photomontages but you stopped, you’ve gone back to it recently, was it a conscious decision to stop or did you just begin to find other methods.

PK: I stopped photomontage at the advent of photoshop when it was everywhere – everyone started putting images to together and then people got much more concernced with the look of it rather than the actual content. I got sick of the smoothness of photographic images so I wanted to make object – something that a physical that people had to manouvre around so I started to work with wood, photographs stuck on wood, pallets and different things like that – different ways of trying to get people physically involved with looking at the work. Everywhere there were exploding images and images being put together on photoshop.

MK: But then, does it worry you that you reach a much smaller audience because it was much more agit-prop before – on banners etc. Now it is in a gallery or a review in a newspaper…

PK: The fact that its work that is an object that gets stuck in a gallery. Now I work with photomontage and with paint and gallery bound work.

MK: You’ve moved into digital….

PK: I work with Cat Picton Phillips because I haven’t been able to work with computers because I am so used to working with stuff so we collaborate together and through that we have created a lot of political montages and it’s a technique that now everyone can do which is great.

MK: So does digital make it more glossy?

PK: Yeah, they are color as well and I think people want perfect images these days.

MK: Now you have mashed up images perfectly printed and put together which is different to how is used to be….

PK: It’s different but you have to make images that have that visual color impact and smoothness of color photography in newspapers otherwise it seems like it’s coming from another era. So if you’re manipulating you’ve got to work with the images that are coming in now. Otherwise it becomes a stylistic thing. I still do hand-made montages now, all techniques are now available especially to young people that there is no technique that is more revolutionary than any other. It depends what you do with it – digital manipulation is another tool that everyone can take up. It’s all there so there are very exciting possibilities in terms of putting stuff together.

MK: Do you think you could every do non-political work now? You have always done political work since your mid-20’s.

PK: I came out of the protest movement against the Vietnam war so I have always related art to social reality, and that’s why I have explored my own thinking through looking at what’s going in the world because I believe we are all social animals and should care about one another. It seemed the natural thing to do.

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