Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky the 47 year old Russian businessman, who formerly was the  wealthiest man in Russia and 16th wealthiest man in the world before his wealth evaporate with the collapse of his holding in the Russian petroleum company Yukos, is due for release from prison after serving an eight-year jail term for fraud and tax evasion, which many claim was politically motivated as he had challenged Vladimir Putin by financing the opposition. Khodorkovsky now faces another jail sentence from a second trial believed intended to keep the former tycoon behind bars for as long as possible, stemming from accusations he stole two billion barrels of oil.

Inspired by BBC World News http://ow.ly/3tXC4

Political Arts | Ian Bunn Visual Artist

My digital art work is essentially politics and art. It’s about iconic people, places and events of our day.  Recorded visually through daily compilations of manipulated digital images, posted online and disseminated via online media and social networks. The works are diaristic in nature that metaphorically record a spectator’s experience of the contemporary digital age.  The resulting work intentionally has a painterly aesthetic acknowledging my historical painting practice.

Adapting Pop Art’s notion of mass media imagery into a context of the contemporary digital age, the work draws on a myriad points of reference. Utilizing fractured images to provide an allusion to the digital noise pounding away daily into our sub consciousness.  The work is essentially popular culture arts, diverging from the traditional Pop Art notion of a pronounced repetition of a consumer icon, instead this work focuses on the deluge of contemporary digital content. The compilation of the fragmented imagery is vividly distractive, not unlike cable surfing or a jaunt through Times Square.

This digital photo manipulation art work is premised on the basis that Pop art in its beginnings, freeze-framed what consumers of popular culture experienced into iconic visual abstractions. With the advent of the techno age, visual information circulates in such quantities, so rapidly and exponentially, that to comprehend a fraction of it all becomes a kind of production process in itself.  Hence this work considers fragmented elements of Popular Culture through an artistic and conceptual exploration of specific people and events of the day.

www.ianbunn.com