Every Wednesday on our course we are visited by an artist, who then explains their practice and how they have become and established artist. Shortly afterwards we have the option to join a Q and A session with the artist if we particularly like their work.
This Wednesdays visitor was Heath Bunting who is renound for being controversial with his art and classes himself as a weaponised artist, meaning his previous works usually get taken as negative responses or deviant. For example, he explained how he made a name for himself by the controversial work he created when he had only just entered the world of art. He explained that he dropped out of education and was left to roam the streets, searching for a trade. He then came across the craft of glass work such as stained glass windows, which he gained an apprenticeship in. From this he stated that he learnt customer service skills which would later aid him in is own business. Three years later he had moved on form glass to graffiti and street art. One of his fist police encounters was when he used his skill of glass making and combined it with street art by fixing broken glass panes with bold colourful filaments, as shown in the picture below.
However, he didn't see this as vandalism. Outraged by the fact that they were taking his work to be a negative thing, he reacted by creating real graffiti. But he used chalk to mislead them as thinking it would wash off, when in fact Bunting had mad it long lasting by adding a special solution. This only came about because he used to use chalk for street art, due to a member of the public being very fond of a particular piece they sprayed it to make it long lasting.
His interests then became more controversial and criminal. For example, he ran a pirated artist radio station for 18 months, part took in media debates and started to become a recognised name online. Shortly after this his work entered mainstream media, which he believes destroyed his work ethic and the meanings of his pieces. Becoming internet famous made him less confident, so as a solution he deleted everything and had a break for six months. Afterwards he regained fame for his recent works in airport toilets, as it was unusual. Sick of repeating himself, he decided to take up a commission that was offline, called "super-weed". This acted as a bridge back to reality and the streets for Bunting. Continuing on from this he made modified rape seeds, smuggled into Europe, named "Monsanto - Natural Reality". This then became his main weaponised piece because it was then placed in the bulk of a missile, in Denmark, to be ridden around on a bike throughout the city. He now realises this was a step too far. But this did spark a new theme for his art, where he would look at how borders are crossed. Due to the extent of travelling involved in his previous pieces, he had knowledge on how to illegally cross into armed territories. "Borderxing Guide" consisted of no documents or papers, but just maps that connected the instructions. Example being, "Jumping the euro-star". Bunting said," Every system has a hole in it", it took him three attempts to do so, but as a consequence he was classified as a terrorist. His story was very intriguing as he went on to explain how he was interrogated by MI5, framed for bomb planting at Gatwick airport. His work then became databased. Following on he has recently done a piece, "The Status Project", where he made new identities to hide himself. Being an artist was his salvation so he needed a way of escaping the restrictions of being classified. After another interrogation, over 24 hours long, he was taken off the terrorist list and was declassified by gaining a commission from the Tate. It only had to be a small one, so he had institutional backing. In response to this whole situation he created "The Map of Terrorism", which shows his predicted route to imprisonment - to being reintegrated back into society.
