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.
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.
Banksy in Barcelona. BornBanksy in Barcelona. Plaza de la Veronica.Banksy in BarcelonaBarcelona ZooBarcelonaBanksy in Tokyo – 2003Banksy in Berlin – 2003Banksy in Paris – 2003Banksy in Paris – 2003Los Angeles – 2002San FranciscoSan FranciscoLove is in the Air. Bethlehem, 2003
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:
In March 2001, Banksy went to Glasgow to participate in an exhibition at The Arches, a club located under Glasgow Central Railway Station. The organiser and main attraction of the exhibition was anti-art world colleague Jamie Reid. According to several sources, Banksy’s pieces didn’t sell well, and they were taken back to London, where they appeared a few months later at the Cargo Club exhibition. Very little documentation remains.
Banksy joined the Easton Cowboys, a radical football team from Bristol. In early 2001, they went to Chiapas, Mexico, to play against a football team from EZLN, Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional. Banksy played as a goalkeeper. During the stay in Chiapas, the Banksy team completed a few stencils and at least two free-hands.
Banksy at work in ChiapasMural in ChiapasBanksy at work in ChiapasBanksy stencil in ChiapasBanksy stencil in Chiapas
The trip was partly financed by a raffle of a Banksy painting in October 2000:
Photo: Tangent Books
SWISS EMBASSY. 26 JANUARY 2001
The Swiss ambassador to the UK invited a group of street artists to decorate the underground parking of the embassy. It was part of a cultural programme. The press release from the Swiss Embassy read as follows:
“The course of the new century will be shaped and determined largely by those who are 15 – 30 years old today. We, the members of staff at the Swiss Embassy in London, are dedicating our programme for 2001 to this particular section of our society. We want to find out from the “next generation” what it thinks of the future, how it plans and influences future events, what values and ideas it has. We want to learn and understand, we want to debate and experience.Together with young people and young adults we intend to organise five principal events:
On 26 January 2001: Graffiti Party in the Garage at the Embassy
On 29 May 2001: Swiss Ambassador’s Award 2001 (Mirjam Tschopp, violin, and Karl-Andreas Kolly, piano)
In summer 2001: Trendsetting Sports and Food Event in the streets of London
Also in summer 2001: Fashion Event
As the grand finale in November 2001: major Swiss Event for young artists at Tate Modern.
We want to begin the year 2001 with a New Year Graffiti Party for 15-30 year-olds in the Garage at the Embassy. We have invited other graffiti artists too, who will transform the Embassy’s Garage into a cultural space one month before the Party.”
Two of Banksy’s many pieces:
Photos: Banksyforum, Flickr
The Guardian told the story behind the ambassador’s initiative:
The first exhibition in London took place in a railway underpass on Rivington Street. In Banksy’s own words:
“We came out of a pub one night arguing about how easy it would be to hold an exhibition in London without asking anyone permission. As we walked through a tunnel in Shoreditch someone said – You’re wasting your time, why would you want to paint pictures in a dump like this?”
The official flyer for the Rivington Street exhibition
The exhibition was divided into five sections. This is the main section:
Photo: paulavalerio82 / Flickr
The programme for the first exhibition in London:
Rivington street programme. Source: Juliens
As explained in the program above, all images were available for purchase as stencilled canvases through an ingenious mail order system. Every motive had a number—see the photo below. The interested buyer had to send an email to buyabanksy@hotmail.com and indicate which work they wanted to buy. There were 25 motives available. The canvases came in three sizes: small, £99.99; medium, £159.99; and large, £199.99, each in an edition of 25. The canvases were delivered to the buyer after three weeks.
The motives with the numbers in orange are for mail order. Photo: Paulavalerio82 / FlickrRivington Street, overview
After moving to London in late 1999, Banksy returned to Bristol in February 2000 to open his first regular indoor exhibition at the restaurant Severnshed on The Grove, right behind the docks. Nowadays, the restaurant has changed its name to the Harbour House. The show was a mixture of stencils and acrylic on canvas. There were several remarkable pieces: Simple Intelligence Testing, Sharks, and You Told That Joke Twice.
Official flyer for the Severnshed exhibition.
Overview / Simple Intelligence Testing
Self portrait
Shark with Trolley
Simple Intelligence Testing
You told that joke twice
Love is in the Air (LIITA)
Heavy Weaponry
Precision Bombing
Pricelist Severnshed
The prices ranged from £130 to £1,750. All of the pieces were sold.
Banksy’s first non-street art exhibition was called “A Romantic View of Easton”. It was organised by Paul Kelly and took place in a flat in Easton, Bristol. There was an early version of Love is in the Air.
Banksy did an interview with the Knowledge Magazine the same year, where he explained his move into oil on canvas:
“What I’m facing is this compromise between making images that are more beautiful than my graffiti but get seen by less people. I think doing a gallery show would be kind of a step down, both in terms of how many people see your shit and what type of person sees it.”
Here are some of the works Banksy presented at the exhibition in Easton:
Do comunity serviceAn early “Love is in the Air”Portrait of an Artist
Photos: Mark Simmons – Home Sweet Home, Banksy’s Bristol.
THE MILD MILD WEST. BRISTOL 1999
Photo: R.A.
The Mild Mild West is one of Banksy’s most iconic freehand works. Banksy painted it in broad daylight on a building in Stoke Croft, Bristol. It’s a response to several incidents in the late 90s with the Bristol police breaking up rave parties in full riot gear.
CARLTON ARMS, NEW YORK. 1999
A few months later, Banksy visited New York and the Carlton Arms Hotel on East 25th Street, where he decorated a stairwell and the room 5B.
From the magazine Curbed New York:
“The artists are mostly up-and-comers, but some went on to garner significant acclaim—none more so than Banksy, who decorated a stairwell and room 5B in 1999, years before he became the world’s most famous street artist. His colorful murals of cartoonish animals are a far cry from the satirical monochrome stenciling for which he later became known.
But outside the lobby there’s another early Banksy with more recognizable motifs: a fat cat politician smoking a cigar, a campaign poster of Elvis in Mickey Mouse ears, and a ballot box with a stick of dynamite wedged inside.
One of the managers, Hugo Ariz, says that Banksy—whom he describes as “a very funny, nice, regular kind of guy”—was experimenting with stenciling while at the hotel, and some of his practice stencils lying around somewhere. Ariz recently unearthed a rolled-up canvas that turns out to be a Shadowman painting by Richard Hambleton, the street artist whose sinister figures covered downtown Manhattan in the 1980s. Apparently, the Basquiat and Haring contemporary lived and worked at the hotel for a year; you can spot some of his pieces in the corridors and near the front door.”
According to Steve Wright’s and Richard Jones’s excellent book Home Sweet Home, Banksy’s first stencil was an insect in a spotlight on a wall on Windmill Hill in South Bristol. The exact year is unclear, but 1996 is a good approximation.
Photo: Home Sweet Home, Steve Wright and Richard Jones
Banksy unofficial 