Summer piece - The Great British Bake Off Explosion

In this piece I was really interested in showing and satirising the current events going on in the the mainstream pop culture of the time in which the piece was created. For example the painting includes Mary berry, the great British bake off tent being exploded and football manager Sam Alidise all put into a very unrealistic, serial, narrative.

I chose to make work about subjects such as this due to their cultural and intellectual accessibility. I hope to make the work understood and more importantly enjoyed by a large demographic. In order to achieve this accessibility, I believe the most source imagery should come from Pop culture and the mainstream media.

The immediate idea for this painting came when I was on Facebook and came across a photo of mary berry looking very evil. I then came up with the narrative of Marry berry being an evil mastermind from a bond film, the juxtaposition of this very sweet elderly lady being responsible for an act of terrorism on the british bake off tent amused me and I liked the low level of maturity and silliness.

I originally tried to portray this narrative in a complex composion including lots of mark making and drawing, after many sketches I struggled to create a composion that I was happy with pictorially. I therefore decided to take a step back and simplify the image, the simplicity of a flat green field allowed me to develop the narrative and gave me a platform to insert characters running from the explosion. For example Mo Farah, Jamie Vardy and clipart figures taking selfies with and running from the explosion.

The presence of football culture in this piece is not because I myself am a huge fan, it is more because I am interested in the masculinity and "lad" culture of football and the contrast of this to fine art culture. This subject of culture is something I wish to explore in my work, for example the relationship between art and class.

I like to communicate many of my ideas and narratives through the dialogue of painting and collaging. Personally, I find painting the most visually stimulating way of image making, along with the process being the most enjoyable. By implementing collaged figures and objects it allows me to quickly and easily communicate ideas of pop culture and achieve a contrast of realism against the expressive painterly movement and gesture. I like to think off these collaged figures as alive characters living inside the painting. I believe this element of realism may be important in making the piece understood and enjoyed by a wider audience.