Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

Wael Said Abbas Ghonim the 30 year old Egyptian Internet activist and Head of Marketing for Google Middle East has received international acclaim for energizing the pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt following his emotional TV interview upon release by Egyptian police who had held him secretly for eleven days. Thousands of Egyptians in response to Ghonim’s interview protested in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to reject the embattled Egyptian regime’s pledges of constitutional reforms. Ghonim is the administrator of a Facebook page called “We are all Khaled Said” which is widely credited for inspiring the first January 25 protest. Ghonim is the subject of another Facebook page with 150,000 fans that seeks to authorize him to speak on behalf of the somewhat fractured groups of protestors.

Inspired by Hadeel Al-Shalchi ow.ly/3TKAI image source Wikipedia ow.ly/3TKsH

What's wrong with that? I don't understand (August 19th)

Former Israeli soldier Eden Abargil claims to have done nothing wrong after posing photos on her facebook page depicting herself smiling in front of bound and blindfolded Palestinian men.  Middle eastern news agencies have expressed outrage at the sadistic and degrading culture of the occupational forces within Palestine.  Abargil states that she does not see anything wrong with the photographs or with her having posted them online via her facebook page. The image was listed under a title of ”The Army … the Most Beautiful Time of My Life”.

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.