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Mendes began making oil paintings of newspaper pages in 2001 when he found a scrap of an Arabic newspaper in Brick Lane, east London. Blowing onto his feet, he picked up a newspaper picture of a turbaned man aiming a Kalashnikov which he later made into a painting that formed part of a diptych, the other being a portrait of George W. Bush. Scheduled to be shown at Mendes’ final MA show, opening on September 11th 2001, the artist had portentously paired Bush with a Kalashnikov aimed at him by the then relatively unknown Osama Bin Laden. This became the precursor of one of Mendes’ two obsessions: the first being The War on Terror, a ten year retrospective of which was recently exhibited at Kenny Schachter / ROVE; and the second being an unyielding recreation of newspaper Obituaries.