[ad_1]
Last year, it was the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, a neoclassical building set in glorious parkland and containing works by DalÍ, Picasso and Miró. This year, the work of the artist known as Cold War Steve can be viewed in libraries, pubs, cafes and even the occasional front room.
Christopher Spencer, who creates satirical collages featuring political leaders in prosaic settings, has created a free downloadable exhibition to be simultaneously staged in UK towns and cities from Penzance to Dundee, and at least half a dozen other countries.
The exhibition pack – 23 high-resolution images, a template for a promotional poster and some basic guidelines on printing – has been downloaded almost 4,000 times since it went online at coldwarsteve.com last weekend. Known as You, Me and Cold War Steve – the International Exhibition of the People, it is in keeping with an artist who started making collages on his phone on the bus on the way home from work, and shares his work for free on social media.
“We were thinking about an exhibition but didn’t want a white-walled gallery and canapes. I don’t feel part of that art world,” Spencer told the Observer.
“My audience is splendidly bestrewn across the British Isles (and beyond), and certainly not confined to the big cities. We wanted to let anyone, anywhere, put on their own Cold War Steve exhibition – the more unique the venue, the better.”
Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s adviser, features in many of the images, along with Boris Johnson and other senior Tories, Jeremy Corbyn, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un, and Vladimir Putin. A quadriptych is devoted to Piers Morgan; another to Johnson’s recent holiday in Mustique. Old favourites Phil Mitchell, the EastEnders character played by Steve McFadden, and Cilla Black are among the onlookers.
Spencer has said he draws inspiration from the medieval Dutch artists Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel, and he has been described as an unsparing satirist and social chronicler. Asked how he felt about the new decade, he said: “Obviously not brilliant. But I really appreciate that I can channel my anxieties into a piece of art. I dread to think how I’d cope otherwise.”
Spencer makes a modest income by selling prints and jigsaw puzzles. “It’s just brilliant to get stuff out there. As long as I can tick by, that’s fine.”
Last September, he created a large collage, Harold, the Ghost of Lost Futures, for the National Galleries of Scotland. He “wanted to move away from my usual Brexit dystopian hellscapes, to produce something visually and spiritually uplifting”. The collage was “a celebration of Britain’s diverse and creative magnificence”. His only “proper exhibition” thus far was A Brief History of the World (1953–2018) at The Social in London in 2018.
Among the venues that have so far proposed to mount The International Exhibition of the People in April are a mannequin warehouse, former Conservative club, cafe, cinema, community centre, record shop, hospital, library, pub, boatyard, someone’s front room – and an art gallery.
Spencer plans to visit as many as possible “in a kind of post-Brexit road movie”. His website advises those interested in mounting an exhibition to print the images in any size and on any surface, with or without borders and frames. It adds: “There is no set order to display. Titles of each are included as the file names. Other than that there is no info to include, feel free to write your own if you want.”
[ad_2]
READ SOURCE
