Shooting Craps

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‘SHOOTING CRAPS’ IS A LIMITED EDITION BY POP ART ARTIST, BRAD FAINE

Price: £4000

Limited edition of 5

Mono-print in 5 different colourways is a digital print plus screenprint glazes on a stretched canvas

The proliferation of a particular form of jargon used in recent newspaper articles and government briefings provided the basic text for this print. The use of phrases like Astroturfing, Dog whistling and Throwing a Dead Cat on the Table supplied a starting point, in which the alphabet text could be construed as a primer for spin doctor speak. The format of two of concentric spirals of dice evocative of Shooting Craps, are an ironic reflection of the chance element involved in catching the Corona Virus, while the rainbow colours we now associate with our support for the NHS in this time of crisis are used as an homage to the medical profession.

The earliest record of a kind of spin doctor is generally held to be Zoroaster  (or Zarathustra 1500 BC? who was regarded as the first philosopher) while throughout history important political figures such as Bishop Odo who was said to have commissioned the Bayeux Tapestry to justify William’s seizure of the English throne; Thomas Cromwell and Shakespeare’s whitewash of Henry the Eighth’s killing of Richard the third; Lord Burley and Lord Walsingham’s manipulation of Queen Elizabeth to persuade her to execute Mary Queen of Scots, until more recently, a much milder Lord Armstrong merely admitted to being ‘economical with the truth’