FOLLOWING HARD ON THE HEELS of the media coup that was Margaret Thatcher’s funeral Peter Kennard and Cat Phillips present their latest collaboration – BLUE MURDER – which takes on Tory leader, David Cameron’s smooth and line-less visage (do I scent a hint of Botox?) as their blank canvas.

I’ve been familiar with Peter’s work since the Eighties when he contributed to the NME. His anti cold war remix of Constable’s ‘Haywain’ was a classic and it’s hardly surprising that Banksy doffs his cap to the art of this man. Both Peter and Cat were part of Banksy’s posse of art activists who went to Gaza to confront the dreaded Israeli wall and in recent times they have been engaged in the odd large scale collaborations .

As Thatcher’s spawn, the Old Etonians on the Tory front bench – along with Boris Johnson and his brother! – are clearly on a mission to destroy the welfare state and in response KENNNARDPHILLIPS rip into Cameron’s face to reveal a Britain that is reeling from lack of growth, chronic unemployment and cutbacks – a hunched lonely figures trudges down a bleak street, a scrawled sign screams “Elec off” while a bailiffs notice has you wondering about the plight of those cast out onto the street. It’s an emotive exhibition – both these artists are angry and I can’t wait for large scale images like these to appear and haunt towns and inner city neighbourhoods across the UK.

By printing on newsprint and incorporating statistical data from the Financial Times Peter and Cat root the Tory leader in the brutal world of Capital and then, while using raw materials like charcoal and indian ink, they peel back the layers to get under the skin of an ideology which is guaranteed to engender division and conflict.

This show points  to the need to nurture a resistance to the Tory onslaught and is a rallying call for other artists and creatives to unite and produce work that aims to expose the physical impact of these rabid free-marketeers on our communities and on a future that John Lydon once defined as, “No Future….”

KENNARDPHILLIPS – BLUE MURDER is on at the Hang-Up Gallery, 56 Stoke Newington High St N16 7PB    /  CHECK:  http://www.hanguppictures.com