Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Reginald Epps Jr an 8 year old boy was picked up by a tornado from his Alabama house and swept away into the darkness of the storm, survived with only relative minor cuts and bruises. Epps was inside the family home with his family when the tornado struck the house, initially popping the windows out, then ripping away the walls and roof, sucking him up into the swirling 200mph winds before dropping him some 10 metres away without injury. The house was destroyed during the 30 second barrage as the storm passed through. Epps parents feared the worst given the ferocity of the tornado and the damage it created, but were stunned to see their son walking back towards them, describing how he floated up into the tornado then just floated back down.

Inspired by Daniel Bates ow.ly/4Q84J image source Disney ow.ly/4Q8cG

Dutch boy a sole survivor (May 13th)

This work is about iconic people, places and events of our day.  Recorded visually through daily compilations of manipulated digital images, the work is 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 the artists 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.

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