Initially trained as a painter and fuelled by his activism against the Vietnam War, Kennard turned to photomontage in the 1970s and the legacy of John Heartfield to deconstruct the imagery and language of the mass media in order to break-up the monopoly they persistently hold on ‘truth’. Internationally renowned for the photomontages he constructed in support of CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) across the '70s and '80s, Kennard has produced iconic images for left publications and social protests that are firmly lodged in the collective consciousness and still potent and as powerful today.

A prime example is his détournement of John Constable’s The Hay Wain, reworked as Haywain with Cruise Missiles (1980), in support of the women who were occupying Greenham Common. In this subversive photomontage, acquired by the Tate in 2007, three nuclear warheads are inserted into the idyllic East Anglian countryside depicted in Constable's famous painting. The impetus for this work was the proposal to house US nuclear cruise missiles in rural East Anglia. It was also a response to a Ministry of Defence leaflet that portrayed the missiles in delicate watercolours.

The works not only serve to expose the relationship between power, capital, war and the destruction of planet Earth but also ‘to show new possibilities emerging from the cracks and splinters of the old reality’.