Protest art uncovers half-truths

When Tate Modern curated Media Burn, last year's exhibition of political art, works from the 1970s and 1980s were shown alongside today's artists. Peter Kennard's old anti-nuclear photomontages stood out a mile.

The younger artists, however, mainly concentrated on spoof protests. Apart from old hand Martha Rosler, who reworked an anti-Vietnam war piece, Iraq was hardly mentioned.

There might have been some reawakening more recently, as a visit to Tate Britain will attest, but political art isn't what it used to be. But then, the 1970s and 1980s were more ideologically divided times.

Now Kennard has collaborated with Cat Picton Phillips to produce Blairaq. Their large newsprint images have been layered and torn to reveal images underneath: of Blair, of war, of Stockwell Tube station where Jean Charles de Menezes was killed. In one installation, a digital image of a grinning Blair, posing while he takes a trophy picture of himself on his mobile against a bombed landscape, emerges from rubble.

The newspaper layering is effective in suggesting truths half-revealed or lies exposed. But it also means a lack of the visual immediacy of his earlier work.

But more importantly, it also poses this question: how relevant is a piece of protest art in a gallery today when newspaper cartoonists often do the job more effectively?

Until Jul 12, Leonard Street Gallery, 73A Leonard Street EC2, Mon to Sat 11am to 6pm, free. Tel: 020 7033 9977. www.tlsg.co.uk Tube: Old Street

Blairaq
Leonard Street Gallery
73A Leonard Street
EC2