Cold War Steve is the nom de plume of Christopher Spencer, a British collage artist and satirist. He is the creator of the Twitter feed @Coldwar_Steve. His work typically depicts a grim, dystopian location in England populated by British media figures, celebrities, and politicians, usually with Eastenders actor Steve McFadden looking on in disgust. His work has been described as having "captured the mood of Brexit Britain" and likened to earlier British political satirists Hogarth and Gillray. As of February 2020, his account has over 240,000 followers.
Early life
Spencer was born in Birmingham in 1975. He went to art college at Nuneaton in Warwickshire where his fellow students included film directorGareth Edwards. He then failed to get into three different universities and subsequently spent the next twenty years working a series of mundane jobs in factories and the public sector. Recovering after an attempted suicide, Spencer concentrated on his art creating the montages on his phone, often while travelling to work on the bus.
Work
McFadden's Cold War first appeared on Twitter in March 2016. As the title suggested, the work initially concentrated on the Cold War era, inserting Steve McFadden into photographs from the period often featuring Ronald Reagan or Mikhail Gorbachev. The EU referendum in June 2016 was a watershed in his career and led to his work taking on a more surreal tone. Speaking in December 2018 he said "rather then dealing with it as I've done in the past – which would have been drink or drugs or whatever – I channelled it more into my art. I incorporated other characters, so it's slowly become more satirical and political." The work expanded to include politicians such as Theresa May, Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un in incongruous settings such as a run-down British working men's club or a derelict flytipping site alongside British celebrities such as Noel Edmonds, Cliff Richard, Danny Dyer or Cilla Black. Steve McFadden is the one constant in his montages. He held his first exhibition A Brief History of the World at The Social in London between October and December, 2018. The show was attended by comedian Al Murray and Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson. In November 2018 his first public work, The Fourth Estate, commissioned by RRU News, was unveiled in Williamson Square in Liverpool. The work measuring is inspired by the third panel of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. Other large scale outdoor artwork followed at Glastonbury 2019 and a piece for the National Galleries of Scotland'Harold, The Ghost of Lost Futures as part of their 'Cut and Paste' exhibition. The show also featured work by Matisse, Peter Blake, Joan Miró, Hannah Höch andJohn Heartfield. In 2019 Cold War Steve published two books with Thames & Hudson. The Festival of Brexit in March followed by A Prat's Progress in October. A pamphlet of the early work titled McFadden’s Cold War also appeared via Rough Trade Books. Cold War Steve has released several limited artworks and a hit 'Hellscape jigsaw at the end of 2019. Works have appeared in The Guardian and the Big Issue He has also designed the front cover for Time.
