Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Barry Blyth Holloway the 78 year old former Australian and former Papua New Guinean politician has been remembered on his passing in an article by Mark Baker in The Age titled ‘An affair to remember’, highlighting how more than any other Australian, Barry Holloway was instrumental in the making of modern Papua New Guinea, a country he loved and made his own. Baker states “…It [his journey] began with a teenage cadet patrol officer trekking through the remote and untamed territory of New Guinea and ended with a distinguished political career, a knighthood and the deep affection of a generation of Papua New Guineans. …He was one of the first expatriates to advocate independence for the Australian trust territory in the 1960s. He helped found Pangu, the country’s first political party, and ran the numbers that saw a brash young journalist named Michael Somare become its first leader. He chaired the committee that drafted the constitution and, at independence in 1975, he was one of the first white men to take citizenship of the new nation, happily surrendering his Australian passport. He became speaker of the first parliament after independence, then a senior minister in several governments. …”Barry never saw himself as merely a catalyst for change,” says Tony Voutas, who left PNG on the eve of independence. ”For him, it was his country. He was one of the few in those colonial days who looked at Papua New Guineans as equal human beings. The planters called them bush kanakas and some right-wingers regarded them as a different evolutionary stream. ”But Barry was one of those people who did not see race. And the Papua New Guineans regarded him as one of them. And once you are accepted into their society it is as if you were born into their society.”

Inspired by Mark Baker, The Age ow.ly/hHQgn Image source PNGAttitude ow.ly/hHPtY

Claims he was victim of a gross injustice (December 16th)

Sir Michael Somare the 74 year old prime minister of Papua New Guinea has voluntarily stepped down over allegations relating to personal financial statements with a leadership tribunal set up to evaluate the official misconduct allegations against him. Political turmoil had intensified within the Papua New Guinea government following several key events in recent days, culminating from the country’s supreme court ruling that the governor-general’s election was invalid, and a cabinet reshuffle that ousted Somare’s deputy Don Polye. Polye and his followers are now tipped to join the opposition in a no-confidence motion likely to topple the government at a time when there is no valid governor general.

Inspired by Liam Fox at ABC News http://ow.ly/3rq0s

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

Argument put for PNG trip (May 14th)

My work is 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 diverges 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.

The 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 Pop Culture through an artistic and conceptual exploration of specific people and events of the day.

The works are presented as individual pieces printed with Archival-Inks on 308g Cottonrag-paper, along with A3 sized bound monthly editions, and monthly looped video compilations.
www.ianbunn.com