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Dead or Alive – Robocop – Premium Canvas by Mark Davies

My interpretation of the original Robocop from 1987. This film sticks in my memory from watching it on VHS at my mates house when his dad was out, it was the first film I had seen where it was so brutal and bloody. The scene where Ed-209 was introduced to the boardroom and malfunctioned before spraying bullets stuck with me for ages, it’s still terrifying even now when you picture the sheer terror and realisation the seconds are counting down quicker than you can react to, awful! So when this commission was booked in it was the natural focus for me, same with when I took on Jaws from my current Lost In Hollywood collection I decided to confront my childhood fears and embrace those memories!

The film showcased how the city was being overrun by criminal brutality and how the police force were losing the battle whilst civilians were being overrun by their robotic equivalents. Omnicorp was the huge machine at the centre of it all but were they making masterpieces or monsters? Who was controlling who in the streets that had been promised a silver lining.

It is said that Robocop as a concept was inspired by the futuristic British cop Judge Dredd and you can certainly see this, as a subtle reference to this I have placed Judge Dredds helmet within the scene, something that is designed to confuse but then encourage greater thought. The catchphrase “I’d buy that for a dollar” is based on the catchphrase “would you buy that for a quarter” from a fictional radio show in Cyril M. Kornbluth’s short story “The Marching Morons.” I have referenced both the catchphrase and the story by placing a single dollar bill centrally and scrawling a message on the wall from the story that sums up perfectly what I am saying through this piece, it reads ‘ARE WE EVOLVING TOWARD BECOMING MARCHING FUCKING MORONS?’ Robocops’ gun and a hand grenade from the film feature also along with empty bullet casings.