"I was once an outlaw in the Wild West, then I was the silent good guy with a poncho swigging shots of burdock, then I was Starsky – or was I Hutch? Running over bad guys by the stairwell of the flats...Then I discovered girls..." - Pete McKee

Curatorial Note

Created for Pete's 2022 Don't Adjust Your Mindset exhibition this work references surrealist artist René Magritte’s 1929 painting, The Treachery of Images, aka This Is Not a Pipe. The toy cap gun in Pete’s work is something kids from his generation would have played with. The artist uses this imagery to reference simpler times before the internet, whilst simultaneously thinking about the young people who might turn to violence having been indoctrinated by extremist groups encountered online.

One of the many ways young people are targeted by alt-right groups online is through the use of memes, an insidious way to capture the attention of impressionable people and spread hateful messages. Many use social media, particularly Instagram, as a way of catching up on the news and for political commentary. Although this is not inherently harmful, it is very concerning that alt-right propaganda, which has been linked to gun violence, makes its way so easily onto these platforms. 

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