Hieronymous Bosch meets Martin Parr, COLD WAR STEVE is the Twitter satirist who has made an art-form of ridiculing political imbeciles, media types and Poundland celebs. His first collection transfers to the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge. NEIL MUDD went to the launch…
I’m supposed to be interviewing Christopher Spencer, better known as Cold War Steve, at the launch of his one-man show at the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge. However, a few hours before I set out for the Calder Valley, I get an email from his manager saying the interview’s off: Cold War Steve has been nobbled for jury service and can’t make it.
There’s something wonderfully apt about Cold War Steve being on a jury. He’s bound to be the angriest of the Twelve Angry Men (and women) assembled, though I’m not sure if I picture him as Henry Fonda or Tony Hancock [#niche]. Rest assured a pointed lo-fi collage is bound to be the result, once the (fingerprint) dust has settled that is.
For those unaware, collages are Spencer’s thing. His Twitter feed McFadden’s Cold War, in which he posts as Cold War Steve, is full of them, created using a cheap phone-app on the bus journey to and from work in the NHS.
Spencer’s world is a banal phantasmagoria peopled by political leaders, media grubbers and low rent celebrity types. Picture the nightmares of Hieronymus Bosch photographed by Martin Parr for his sixth form art project.
Welcome to a hideous parallel universe in which national embarrassments Boris Johnson and Michael Gove snap up trainers from Sports Direct, serial killer Fred West cosies up with Margaret Thatcher and leave-voting cretins Gary Barlow and Nigel Farage stockpile Fray Bentos pies in anticipation of a No-Deal Brexit. All played out under the baleful gaze of Spencer’s everyman conscience, TV’s Steve McFadden.
Not since John Heartfield has photo-montage been so effectively deployed to skewer the malign hypocrisies and corrosive self-interest of those in power. Frequently compared to eighteenth century English satirists William Hogarth and James Gillray (the exhibition’s notes refer to Spencer as the Brexit Bruegel), Viz comic feels somehow nearer the mark.
Transferring to the Trades Club from a pre-Christmas stint at London’s The Social, Spencer’s A Brief History of the World (1953 – 2018) is the artist’s first collection The walls of the tiny bar room of the socialist members co-operative venue are plastered with familiar hi-resolution images taken from the Twitter feed.
All the old faves are accounted for, but it is the lesser known pieces – Richard Nixon aboard Air-Force One cradling McFadden in his arms, a series featuring near empty working men’s clubs save for gobshite pundit Alan Brazil – which arrest the attention.
Particularly impressive is a collage which shows Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev standing in a lush corn-field, while behind him McFadden looks like he’s dropped something. In as much as any picture featuring a ruthless despot and an actor who resembles an angry potato can be, it is a thing of beauty.
Cold War Steve | A Brief History of the World (1953 – 2018) is at the Trades Club, Holme Street, Hebden Bridge is on now. More details here.