Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

With India we equipping of security forces (May 13th 2012)

Zalmai Rassoul the 68 year old Afghanistan Foreign Minister has met for the first time with his Indian counterpart, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna where wide-ranging talks were held. The meeting took place at the India-Afghanistan Partnership Council, set up during the visit of Afghan President Hamid Karzai under the first bilateral strategic pact Afghanistan has signed with any other country. India has concerns with the safety of nearly 4,000 of its nationals living in Afghanistan along with its missions and facilities. Rassoul stated at a joint press conference after the talks, “With India, we are not only willing to discuss the training of our officers, but also equipping of security forces. Security organisations of the two countries are in discussion.” The nature of the Indian assistance to Afghanistan has not been specified, although India is involved in the training of the Afghan National Army. Krishna stated at the press conference “We have always reacted positively to any suggestions from Afghanistan” and has pledged $2 billion for reconstruction activities. India is obviously keen for security of its strategic neighbour which its foe Pakistan tended to regard as its own backyard, as the time runs down for the withdrawal of the international coalition force.

Inspired by Russia & India Report http://ow.ly/aFIBI image source Wikipedia http://ow.ly/aFIhP

Very serious about finding a way out (October 7th)

Hamid Karzai the Afghan President on ninth anniversary of the invasion by US and coalition forces has secretly begun high level negotiations with Taliban representatives to end the war.  The Taliban representatives are authorized to undertake preliminary negotiations on behalf of the Pakistan based Afghan Taliban organisation Quetta Shura and its leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. These negotiations follow Saudi Arabian hosted meetings that concluded a year earlier inconclusively. The aim of these renewed negotiations is to enter an agreement for the participation of Taliban figures into the Afghan government and an agreed timeline for the withdrawal of US and NATO troops.

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