Antidote to a Scary World

"When was the last time you actually ‘published’ or even tweeted about anything remotely positive ‘Jim’? Happy to contribute but you need to drop the shit cloud image first."

This from the Observer June 2019:-

Cold War Steve: satire is my antidote to a scary world

Twitter collagist tells how what started as a coping mechanism has led to the cover of Time and a Glastonbury hook-up. As the world around him gets madder by the day, the process of creating satirical collages has kept Christopher Spencer sane.

The artist known as Cold War Steve, whose image of Brexit Britain sinking beneath the Thames graced the cover of Time magazine this month, could have “gone on Twitter and ranted”. Instead he used the social media platform to share his versions of a Hieronymus Bosch-type hellscape.

“I know from my Twitter audience they are completely dismayed by what’s happening – not just Brexit, but Trump, the rise of the far right, the increase in hate crimes. But there’s something quite powerful about laughing at these people, flaying them alive with humour and sarcasm,” he told the Observer.

In a few days, Spencer will unveil a giant collaborative artwork at Glastonbury, where three years ago the music festival went into collective shock as the result of the Brexit referendum sank in. He has produced a book of his work, The Festival of Brexit, and has begun selling limited edition prints and giant postcards of his collages. But Twitter, where he interacts with 176,000 followers, remains his favourite showcase.

His work features public figures in typically English settings – seaside towns, low-cost supermarkets, working men’s clubs, car boot sales, a nostalgic place of “Fray Bentos pies and insipid high streets”. Among the Brexit cast list are Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Theresa May, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Jeremy Corbyn and the Queen. An international presence is supplied by Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un.

There are also a handful of figures who epitomise Britishness – Cilla Black, Noel Edmonds and, most notably, Phil Mitchell, the EastEnders character played by Steve McFadden. Mitchell appears in almost every collage created by Spencer.

“He’s an everyman, an observer, the hero of the pieces, the anchor to the real world. He’s me looking on in disbelief, really,” said Spencer. He has never had contact with the actor, “but surely someone must have pointed out that he’s on the front of Time magazine? I’d like to think he’s got a copy in a drawer.”

The Time commission came out of the blue as Spencer was shopping for tartar sauce in Asda. “I’d been thinking I’d like to do something in America, it’s such a rich seam, but I didn’t know how to get a foot in the door. Then this email came, asking me if I’d be interested in doing an illustration for Time. The next day they said they wanted it to be the cover of the international edition. It was mind-blowing.”

Spencer, who usually creates his collages on his phone, often on the bus on his way to work as a probation officer, had never before worked to a detailed brief. “It was very specific. They wanted lots of cliched British references – Westminster, Big Ben, London taxis, red buses. But I thought, this is Time magazine, I’m not going to be precious.”

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The Cold War Steve archive can be found here.