Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

I thought we would be safe in the UK (September 20th)

Lydia Besong the Cameroon playwright has received support from several actors and writers in a campaign to stop the planned deportation of both her and her husband Bernard Bately from the UK by the Border Agency. The UK writer’s group ‘English Pen’ has come out in support of Besong who has written three plays since her arrival to the UK in 2006, one of which is titled ‘How I became an asylum seeker’. Besong is claiming asylum following her rape while imprisoned in her home country before travelling to the UK. Amnesty International have confirmed that President Paul Biya’s regime persecutes the SCNC, a pressure group which campaigns for southern Cameroon’s independence. Besong was a member of the SCNC in Cameroon, and had been targeted for persecution, believing their lives are in danger upon returning.

Inspired by Alexandra Topping http://ow.ly/6tZno image source facebook http://ow.ly/6tZp9

Katya Koren a 19 year old entrant to the Miss Ukraine beauty pageant whose battered deceased body was located in the Crimea region a week after her disappearance, is alleged to have been stoned to death by three teenage boys. One of the boys, Bihal Gaziev a sixteen year old, arrested for the murder of Koren claims she violated the laws of Sharia by participating in the beauty contest in which she was placed seventh. Gaziev stated he had no regrets about the death, however police believe despite his confession the motive may have been robbery and rape, Gaziev has a history of mental illness and reportedly had an unhealthy obsession with Koren as a fellow school student. Koren died of multiple blows to the head inflicted with stones.

Inspired by Andrew Osborn ow.ly/5kH8c  image source facebook

People would not get back their right to vote (December 23rd)

Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury a 58 year old senior politician of the Bangladesh opposition has been ordered by a senior judicial magistrate to be shown arrested in a sedition case brought by the police chief Mohammad Mofizuddin for making derogatory comments 12 months earlier about the murder of the acclaimed father of Bangladesh independence (Bangabandhu) Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.  The Bangaldesh government has also asked for his arrest on war crimes charges, stemming from murders committed during the 1971 fight for independence and more recently during an opposition-sponsored general strike, to which Chowdhury has denied any involvement. The recently established war crimes tribunal now claims evidence of genocide, rape, arson and looting during the war of independence committed by Chowdhury 40 years earlier.

Inspired by bdnews24.com http://ow.ly/3uB2V

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