Flowers Gallery is pleased to announce the extension of John Keane's exhibition If You Knew Me. If You Knew Yourself. You Would Not Kill Me. at our Kingsland Road space until 14 January 2017. The show has been described as Keane's 'best ever' by Jon Snow, journalist and television presenter of the Channel 4 news since 1989. The pair were first introduced in 2009 when Keane was commissioned to paint a portrait of Snow to mark his 20th anniversary with Channel 4, and they recently held an 'in conversation' event at Flowers gallery to discuss Keane's career and latest body of work. 

John Keane’s reputation as a political artist has been established through a sustained artistic inquiry into the horrors of military and social conflicts around the world, and the effects of media distortion. His subjects have included Northern Ireland, Central America and the Middle East; and has involved working with organisations such as Greenpeace and Christian Aid. Keane first came to prominence when he was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in 1990 to be the Official British War Artist of the Gulf War. 

The current exhibition was produced in response to the commemoration of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In 2015, Keane visited the country with a group of postgraduate students of Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of St Andrews. The visit, which was designed to examine the causes and legacy of the genocide, took Keane to several of the many locations around the country where more than 800,000 people were slaughtered in the space of 100 days, to meet both survivors, and perpetrators still serving their sentences in prison. The show was given ★★★★ by Londonist and described as 'powerful and uneasy viewing'.