Concept Piece: Apocalypse How?

So I said, about a couple of week ago that I was trying to produce a concept piece. Something creative and something that makes a statement. I finally, kind of, finished it. So here it is. It's called 'Apocalypse How?':

Ok. I don't know whether I should explain this or not?

There's a lot going on in this picture.

It's a bleak kind of industrial environment that is covered in three types of smoke. Pollution, fire and war. There's no grass - except up on the hill - and that's where a ruling elite sit, drinking champagne and looking down on the chaos with immunity.

You've got very recognisable figures in here.

The centre of the picture is dominated by that one eyed Minion character that is like crashing through the housing. This is just an idea of commercialism steam rollering society. It's a double image though because it's wearing that purple UKIP rosette, which is supposed to reflect satirically on that political party and the cult like mindless appeal of it's leader, and the minion like relationship he has with his following.

To the back and the left of the picture is just row after row of terrace housing. The kind of housing I was born in and the kind of housing I live in now. I wanted it to look a bit Lowry, but I wanted the sky to look Van Gogh. I think that's a summary of working class life. We live in a downbeat Lowry environment under a beautiful Van Gogh sky.

The carpark is being stalked by this 'war of the worlds' style walker which is firing it's laser beam down on something which has caused a fire.

I wanted this to be an image for the relentless narrative of perpetual war between the different regions of the planet - and the idea of ever lasting suspicion and paranoia and hoax and dishonesty that seems to exist around it all the time. It's machine like.

On the hill we have a political satire a person that looks an awful lot like David Cameron sits sipping champagne with a girl friend with distinctive red hair. Beside the man is an Eton school tie, upon which everything he has ever achieved rests. We have champagne, strawberries and a pigs head on a plate. There is a big lump of cash and a picture of the missing teenager Milly Dowler, who's phone was hacked by News International.

Behind these characters are three faces stalking the Cameron look alike - who themselves look an awful lot like Boris Johnson, George Osborne and Theresa May.

There is a partially obscured 'Tesco' sign which ties into the urban theme - as it seems all of our urban environments must be dominated by a Tesco. This also plays into the reference to Banksy, which is shrouded by the smoke from the flames of the fire.

You can see a silhouete spraying the wall with a Banksy. The artists is deliberately shrouded in smoke and shadows. The art work is a firefighter who is spraying the fire with flowers in an ineffectual gesture.

This is another two fold image here.

On one hand it's a gesture towards the ever thinning ranks of the fire service - who work hard to maintain the appearance of reassurance - the image of a fire service, but practically are less effective now than ever.

On the other hand, it's a gesture towards street art in this miserable urban setting - it's the only source of art or enlightment or free speech or beauty in the piece.

The road going down the hill has 'one way' written on it as a reference to austerity economics and the road leads all the way down hill to the workhouse. The workhouse has a neon sign and the door is open a jar. The only place in town with a light on.

Smoke pours over the rest of the house as our eyes move right.

An advertisement peeling away and looking seedy read 'The Sun'. This is a further wave in the direction of News International. A recreation of 'The Scream' is dressed in a police uniform, not that any of the political lookalikes on the hill can hear it.

Finally we have a mushroom cloud coming up from between the terrace rows.

This is another dual image.

First I wanted to reference the cost of a nuclear deterrant - that maintaining Trident is actually costing the lives of ordinary people in our country through poverty, on the possibility that it might save more lives in preventing a nuclear war that would inevitably kill all of us.

Of course, if we actually need Trident, it didn't work as a deterrant at all, all we'll all be dead anyway. So it's futile.

As the mushroom cloud plumes into the sky it forms the faces of Janner, Heath, Saville and Mountbatten - the question that hypothetically could be a the nuclear bomb that would destroy the fabric of the political elite.

But does it work? Do feel free to tell me that it doesn't, by all means.