The Cold War Steve Annual 2025 - Birmingham Launch!

We are delighted to be collaborating with the Hare and Hounds to bring Cold War Steve aka Christopher Spencer back to Kings Heath! We had a fantastic event for the Cold War Steve Annual 2024 at the end of last year, and we know this will be another brilliant evening!

This event will run from 7pm - 9:15pm pm with a 20 minute interval

The Cold War Steve Annual 2025 - Launch Party

Birmingham Edition! 

An evening celebrating the publication of the Cold War Steve Annual 2025 with very special guests Roy, Dr Rebecca Anne Barr and of course Cold War Steve!

We’re delighted to welcome Dr Rebecca Anne Barr up from Cambridge University to deliver a unique talk on Cold War Steve and Hogarth. This should be an absolute treat, as an expert in her field and contributor to the latest Cold War Steve annual, this lecture has been put together especially for this event. Don’t worry there wont be a test and we promise it will be fascinating and fun! Rebecca is a Cambridge University Associate Professor, originally from Northern Ireland she has studied at Jesus College Cambridge, taught at St Peter’s College, Oxford, and the National University of Ireland, Galway. We’re honoured she could join us. 

Also heading to the Hare and Hounds is Partisan hero, second time contributor to the annual, and a legend in his hometown of Liverpool, PJ Smith aka Roy. PJ's deft, articulate and startlingly observed stories veer from the comic to the calamitous, cutting to the quick of the broad swathe of people and personalities that comprise his native city, from struggling parents to small-time criminals, pent-up white-collar workers to drinkers long lost to the ale. PJ’s eye is as keen as it is generous, presenting, in the great tradition of English realism, the real lives of people up against it in all sorts of ways, muddling through, trying to make the best of it. His first publication under the moniker 'Roy', Algorithm Party, came out on Rough Trade Editions in 2020. Roy is also a monthly columnist for the Cold War Steve fan club newsletter, the Partisan Post. We love this man. 

And Christopher Spencer aka Cold War Steve will be in-conversation on the night as well, signing books and generally proud to be celebrating the release of his second annual with you in his home town of Birmingham! Come!

Cold War Steve 

Cold War Steve aka Christopher Spencer is an artist from Birmingham, England who started making surreal, satirical and hilarious photomontages on the bus in 2016. Multiple exhibitions, books, commissions for the National Galleries of Scotland, Whitworth in Manchester, Birmingham Museum and Gallery, giant billboard installations at Glastonbury Festival and a TIME magazine cover have all followed!

In 2020 his first jigsaw Hellscape was shortlisted for the Design Museum’s Design of the Year Award and his book A Prat’s Progress nominated for the The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. Cold War Steve the same year shot a feature length documentary - Cold War Steve Meets The Outside World about his work, made with Bafta winning director Kieran Evans. The film was released in October 2020 on Sky Arts and the featured outdoor exhibition of the same name was nominated for a South Bank Award in 2021.
coldwarsteve.com



Cold War Steve Annual 2025:

Charting twelve months of pathetic party politics, farcical electioneering, corporate and industrial ecocide, the sickening rise of the far right, and never-ending age of mega-crisis worldwide, the 2025 Annual features all of Cold War Steve’s largest – and most sardonic – artworks plus contributions from Ian Dunt on the election, Jeremy Deller chatting to Cold War Steve, art history with Jools Holland, Nihal Arthanayake on empathy, Dr Rebecca Anne Barr, Salena Godden, Roy and more.

This event will take place at the Hare and Hounds, Kings Heath.

As always, we look forward to seeing you. 

Catherine & Claire