some sort of Banksy retrospective
Banksy focused on London in 2002 and 2003, but he also did a few pieces in Bristol and Brighton. The iconic work Pulp Fiction went up in 2002 on Old Street in Shoreditch, one of Banksy’s preferred areas in London. The Royal Guards in different areas of London are from the same period.
Banksy participated at the big anti-Iraq war demonstration in London, where he distributed placards with different slogans written on them. One was, “I don’t believe in anything. I’m just here for the violence” .
During the first years of the 2000s, Banksy’s canvases started to sell well. Here are some early originals, mostly oil and acrylic on canvas:
Semipermanent was an annual art festival held in Sydney, Australia. Banksy participated with a 12-metre panel. Melbourne’s Burn Crew, Dmote of Australia, 123Klan of France, and Shepard Fairey also attended.
Photos: Gary Trinh and Semi Permanent
Santa’s Ghetto was a “squat art concept store” set up at Christmas each year in different locations around London. The Dragons Bar in Shoreditch hosted the first edition. There were only Banksy and Ben Eine artworks.
Banksy opened his first Los Angeles exhibition, Existencilism, at the 33 1/3 Gallery on 19 July 2002. The show was sponsored by Puma. The most important piece was a big ‘Stop ESSO’ painted on one of the walls.
19 July 2002 – Opening night Existencilism, Los Angeles. The Stop Esso in the background:
It was a selling exhibition, and Banksy sold quite a few multiple canvases, most of them in an edition of 5 and dated LA 2002 on the stretcher:
Some of the multiple canvases that were sold at Existencilism. Photos: Bonhams and Sotheby’s
A month later, Banksy opened a reduced version of the Existencilism exhibition in Japan – Osaka (8-17 September) and Tokyo (13 – 24 September). Among other pieces, a Laugh Now on cardboard with the text in Japanese:
Laugh Now on cardboard. Photo: Sotheby’s
On May 30, Banksy released his second little black book, much heavier on rats than his first book. The book was launched with a street art show called Graffiti, Hostility and the Jubilee, which took place in a tunnel under the railway tracks connecting Clink Street and Bank End in Southwark, Central London.
UK Indymedia published a collage of photos from the event:
Collage: UK Indymedia
In his own words:
“Like most people I have a fantasy that all the little powerless losers will gang up together. That all the vermin will get some good equipment and then the underground will go overground and tear the city apart”
Burning Man is an annual event held in the Black Rock Desert of northwestern Nevada, about 100 miles north-northeast of Reno. It’s not your typical festival—think of it as a temporary city, Black Rock City, built by tens of thousands of participants who gather to celebrate art, community, self-expression, and self-reliance. The event culminates in the burning of a large wooden effigy, “The Man,” on the Saturday night before Labour Day.
In the 2001 edition of the festival, Banksy had an interesting collaboration with Ukrainian-American artist Maya Hayuk, known for her colourful and abstract graffiti. The collaboration was a comic strip that covered an entire wall right in the middle of the festival area. There are very few photos remaining.
Three sections of the wall at Burning Man.
In the first years of the decade, besides the UK and US, Banksy went to Barcelona, Berlin, Vienna, Bergen, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Paris, and Palestine, where he painted the first stencilled version of the iconic Love is in the Air behind a gas station in Bethlehem.
In the summer of 2001, Banksy organised an exhibition at the Cargo Club on Rivington Street. Cargo Club had opened in November 2000 and was built into the railway arches in the same spot as the Rivington Street railway underpass, where Banksy had done his first show in London the year before.
The exhibition featured a lot of the many unsold pieces from the Peace is Tough exhibition in Glasgow earlier that year. It also had various outdoor pieces in the courtyard.
At the same time, Banksy released a book, Banging your head against a brick wall, the first of a series of three small black books in A6 format. It has some surprisingly well-written texts along with images of his most prominent street art and originals. 54 pages in B&W. Some curious highlights:
Banksy unofficial 