“There’s no way you’re going to get a quote from us to use on your book cover” - Metropolitan Police Spokesperson

Graffiti some folk love it, others hate it. I for one love it when it is done well. Even first year at school i had an article called “Graffiti: Art or Vandalism” published in the school paper. I hate tagging, don’t see the point of writing your nickname in a practically unreadable form of English, but I am a man that appreciates a good “piece”, and for my money at the moment, no one does it better than Banksy.

I will be honest I am not much of an artistic person, but after listening to Ajay talk about this guy, I picked up his book “Wall and Piece” containing images of his work and was suitably impressed. He specializes in Stencil Art, but what he uses them for is funny, insightful, thought provoking and sometime down right works of genius.

His crowning achievements have been displaying A life-size replica of a Guantanamo Bay detainee has been placed in Disneyland and possibly the best punking of a dumb ass celeb of all time when he tampered with hundreds of Paris Hilton albums. His work has been viewed all over the world from London to Los Angles, from Barcelona to Bethlehem. His stuff has also been displayed (illegally) in the Lourve, The Natural History Museum and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has done advertising campaigns for Greenpeace, did the cover for Blur’s Album “Think Tank” and has done work for Puma, just some of the strings to his bow.

He has a manifesto and is still a faceless celebrity (probably coz the police would nick him if they had the chance). The guy is just an Urban Freedom Fighter if you ask me!!

The book is well worth checking out. Below is some examples of his work:

“If you grow up in a town where they don’t have subway trains you have to find something else to paint on. It’s not as easy as it sounds because most subway train drivers do not wander around with Shotguns” - Banksy

plenty more where that came from, and as a special treat, here is the man in action doing the Disney business and the Hilton Punking!!

“People either love me or they hate me, or they don’t really care” - Banksy

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 10:18 pm and is filed under Books and Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.