Coldwar Steve

Coldwar Steve, also known as 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 McFadden's Cold War. The work features photomontages of celebrities with Eastenders actor Steve McFadden in character as Phil Mitchell. The work typically shows a grim, dystopian location in England, populated by British media figures and politicians, with McFadden being the constant, usually looking on in disgust at the scene he is viewing. 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 December 2019, his account has over 210,000 followers.

Spencer was born in Birmingham in 1975. He went to art college at Nuneaton in Warwickshire where his fellow students included film director Gareth 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, using the Pixomatic app, often while travelling to work on the bus.

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 (1953–2018) 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 16 feet (4.9 m) is inspired by the third panel of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. In March 2019 his first book The Festival of Brexit was published by Thames & Hudson.

Works have appeared in The Guardian and the Big Issue He has also designed the front cover for Time.

• A Brief History of the World (1953–2018) - The Social, London (15 October 2018 – 31 December 2018)