Five weeks ago I was asked, along with the artist Banksy, by Damon Albarn to produce an image symbolising peace and Christmas, to be projected on Trinity House in the City of London as part of the Brighten Up London campaign. I was told it was a project organised by Bob Geldof and sponsored by Orange. There were expenses but no fee. To make a public artwork was my spur, to make an image of hope after a year of war.
It was a chance to use a public place to make an iconic image that would reflect the hopes of millions. I tried to visualise the phrase "peace on Earth" by using a painting of the Virgin Mary, replacing her face with an image of the Earth and turning her halo into a peace symbol - a simple juxtaposition creating a photomontage that does not contradict Christian belief but interprets it for a world in danger.
After this - silence. The day for the projection came and went with no projection, followed by a series of confused messages about problems with the image. Eventually, Niamh Byrne, head of media relations at Orange, told the Guardian on December 24 that even though she found the image "absolutely fantastic ... what we were looking for was something that people from little children to grandparents could appreciate". My picture did not, apparently, fall into this category.
I will leave it to the grandmothers who recently risked their lives disarming nuclear submarines in Scotland, and to the many thousands of elderly people and children who went on peace marches in 2003, to respond to the condescension of that remark. I will turn instead to the mission statement on the Orange website: "We are ready to push the boundaries and take risks; we are always open and honest; we say what we do and we do what we say; we want to make a difference to people's lives."
I read on and find that Orange linked up with Index on Censorship this year to launch the Orange/Index debates to discuss issues of free expression, aimed particularly at university students (one hopes no little children or grandparents unwittingly attended). I hereby award the Orange prize for fiction to Orange.
Orange have created a lot of publicity for themselves by sponsoring the Brighten Up London campaign. We Londoners have been lucky enough to see images of mince pies freshly baked by Nigella projected on to one building, and hearts projected on to another. (You guessed it, Heart 106.2 is one of the project's sponsors.) In all, nine buildings were used as screens for a variety of Christmas-type baubles that did not even reach the aesthetic levels of the cheapest Christmas cards.
The patrons of contemporary art, the Medicis of today, are the corporations. They give the impression of supporting dissident views and freedom of expression, but if there is any danger that your sponsored work encourages even a modicum of critical debate, you're out the door. The sponsors are in it to ratchet up "the buying mood".
Censorship of culture is something one does not speak of in the free market - it brings back images of Lady Chatterley and the Lord Chamberlain. But in the visual arts it is an increasing determinant of what people are allowed to see in public spaces. Exhibitions cannot take place if they are not sponsored. A few years ago, the Tate even had trouble finding a sponsor for a Francis Bacon show, as the work appeared a bit too visceral for shareholders to support.
In the case of an exhibition of my own work, entitled Images against War, at the Barbican Centre in 1985, two of the works were censored at the last minute. One was hastily unscrewed from the wall and the other, which could not be moved quickly enough, was covered with an old grey blanket. The censorship of these two works only lasted for one morning. It was the morning a high-ranking Chilean official was scheduled to address a group of bankers at the Barbican. The directors of the Barbican thought that he might be offended by two of my paintings, which were symbolic representations of the barbarism that had taken place directly after the military coup of 1973. Q. Who finances the Barbican? A. The Corporation of London.
Artists are being hung out to dry. Don't take my word for it - go and see the illuminated buildings for yourselves. Tomorrow, they will all have a special New Year celebration stamp projected on to them. Can't wait.
· Peter Kennard's most recent publication is Dispatches from an Unofficial War Artist (Lund Humphries)