some sort of Banksy retrospective
Team Banksy is back to work with a stencilled mountain gazelle on a wall in Richmond, just a stone’s throw from the River Thames and Kew Bridge. There is a subtle message: the mountain gazelle is the national animal of Palestine, and it is also an endangered species. The CCTV was there before Banksy arrived, but it has obviously been redirected towards the gazelle.
It’s definitely one of his best pieces in many years: site-specific, back-to-basics, and with a political message.
The migrant raft appeared during the Idles’ set on the evening of Friday, 28 June. The raft’s release coincided perfectly with the band singing “My blood brother is an immigrant, a beautiful immigrant” from their 2018 hit song Danny Nedelko.
Another interesting art event at Glastonbury is the Terminal 1 installation. It is rumoured that Banksy bought the dismantled terminal building at an auction organised by CAA after Heathrow Terminal 1 closed in 2015, making way for Terminal 2. Although Banksy’s involvement has not yet been confirmed, it undoubtedly draws on his style of art activism, and it has a certain air of Dismaland.
Among the participating artists in the Terminal 1 project are Love Watts, Yoshi Sodeoka, and Mark Wallinger, winner of the 2007 Turner Prize for State Britain, a replica of Brian Haw’s protest camp against the Iraq war.
The manifesto from the Terminal 1 installation reads like this:
“None of us can take credit for where we were born. None of us have the moral right to deprive our fellow humans of resources and opportunities just because they happened to start life somewhere else. And that’s it. To hold this feeling in our hearts – whenever we talk about migration it should be from a position of kindness, humility and good grace.”
As reported by The Guardian on 29 June 2024:
Installation shows experiences of immigration for many as politicians try to exploit issue in run-up to election.
You approach a desk and are met by two stern immigration officials. A line of instructions and questions are barked at you: “Stand shoulder to shoulder”; “Look me in the eyes”; “Are you British?”
This is the welcome visitors receive at Terminal 1, a new area at this year’s Glastonbury festival ran by artists who are all migrants and which gives attenders a taste of what it feels like to sample British border “hospitality”. Emblazoned with the old sign from Heathrow’s Terminal 1, the new area had a long line outside it on Saturday morning as dozens of festival-goers waited their turn to be grilled.
To enter Terminal 1, they must answer a question from the British citizenship test. If they do not know, for example, that members of the public typically cannot attend a youth court hearing, entry could be denied.
“When the audience come through this we’re hoping for them to have a bit of an awakening,” says Miguel Hernando Torres Umba, the performance director. He said he wanted people to come away with an experience of what immigration was like for “the majority of people around the globe”.
The area has already been dubbed the “woke new stage” by the Daily Mail but Hernando Torres Umba says the area’s themes are universal. “Terminal 1’s message is no one is illegal. That is our message … to remind us all that we all humans, we are all migrants one way or another,” he added.
Ahead of the event’s launch, a real immigration issue presented the team with a problem: one of the curators had his visa denied. “He wasn’t able to attend the festival even though he had the backing of the festival,” says Hernando Torres Umba.
The theme of immigration can be found everywhere Glastonbury this year. Banksy’s latest Glastonbury stunt – sending out an inflatable dinghy with dummies representing child migrants during Idles’ headlining set – ensured the issue of immigration was beamed out live on the BBC.
The topic has been one of the overarching themes of the upcoming general election, whether Rishi Sunak’s pledge to “stop the boats”, Keir Starmer and Labour’s plan to establish a “command centre” to deter those trying to enter across the British Channel or Reform’s promise of “net zero migration”.
Another obvious reference at the area is the Rwanda bill, the Conservative plan to send asylum seekers to the east African country.
Terminal 1 approaches the topic in a novel way: after the initial barrage of questions and a terse security check, you enter “Rwanda Duty Free” where you are told about the culture of a country that has found itself in the middle of a culture war in the UK.
Hernando Torres Umba said the area was designed as a counter to the prevailing negative narrative about Rwanda, with artists from the country welcoming visitors. “Rwanda has been used as a deterrent, as a place we should be scared of,” he said. “But Rwandans haven’t had the right to speak and say: ‘Hey, this is where we are’.”
Banksy’s first street art piece in 2024 went up on Hornsey Road in Finsbury Park, northern London. Pictures of the work surfaced in different forums on Sunday, 17 March. It’s a brilliant piece, life-size and site-specific, depicting a woman spraying foliage with a pressure washer on a wall behind a pruned tree.
Photos: @banksy
The new mural has some similarities with an illegal street art piece by Russian artist 0331c ( www.0331c.ru ), painted with a fire extinguisher in 2013 in Moscow:
Bad artists copy, great artists steal?
Who else but Banksy could have come up with the idea to train more than a hundred stewards to behave as rudely as possible at his own art show? Now we know how it was done:
As reported by BBC on 30 December:
The secretive artist normally lets his pictures do the talking but wrote his tribute to Allen for BBC Radio 4 obituary programme Last Word. Allen, one of the founders of the alternative comedy movement in the 1970s, died at the start of December. Banksy enlisted him to train the surly stewards at his dystopian theme park in Weston-super-Mare in 2015.
“Dismaland was organised in strict secrecy so in order to find the hundred or so stewards we needed, we advertised in the local paper for ‘runners and extras’ for a film shoot,” Banksy recalled in his statement.
“I was concerned that when these young people discovered they weren’t on a film set and in fact had to interact with the public all day, they might get a bit freaked out. So I asked Tony to come and host a few basic confidence-building workshops and hone their stewarding skills. It was essentially a pretty dry corporate gig for him.
“However Tony Allen was a born troublemaker. He took one look at the name of the event and for three days in the conference hall of a nearby hotel he trained the teenagers in his own image.”
“He’d been left alone to get on with it, so come opening day we had no idea what was about to hit us. Tony delivered the most surly and incompetent employees in the history of hospitality.”
“They were truly dismal, incapable or unwilling to even point out the fire exits. They ignored any requests for information, they popped the balloons they were meant to be selling, they threw people’s change on the floor, they even went up to random members of the public and licked their ice creams.”
“Tony had instilled in them they should never break character, even when speaking to management. Our head of production lost their mind and threatened to quit. The council and police were not impressed and called a meeting.”
“But by the end of the first day it was clear the stewards were a massive hit. They became by far the most talked about part of the show, overshadowing six months of my hard work and the efforts of 50 invited international artists.”
“I had to hand it to him, Tony Allen really knew how to take the Mickey.”
The deliberately gloomy Dismaland, which featured works by Banksy and other artists he picked, ran in a former open-air swimming baths in the Somerset seaside town for five weeks.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67840897
Banksy is back with a simple yet powerful anti-war message. A bittersweet reminder that Christmas is not a celebration of peace, joy, and overeating for everyone, especially not for the people of Gaza and Ukraine.
Photo: @banksy
As reported by The Guardian on 22 December:
Piece showing three aircraft on stop sign in Peckham was confirmed as genuine by the artist on Instagram.
Two men have been filmed taking an artwork created by Banksy from a south London street less than an hour after it was confirmed as a genuine installation. The artist confirmed the piece – a traffic stop sign covered with three aircraft said to resemble military drones – was his in a social media post shortly after midday on Friday.
In a video shared on social media, onlookers watch as two men are seen taking down the sign at the intersection of Southampton Way and Commercial Way in Peckham at about 12.30pm. Witnesses can be heard saying “oh my god” on the soundtrack of the video as one of men takes the stop sign and runs off, with one woman saying: “It makes me so annoyed.”
The deputy leader of Southwark council, Jasmine Ali, said the artwork “should not have been removed”, adding: “We’d like it back so everyone in the community can enjoy Banksy’s brilliant work.” She said the theft had been reported to the police “to help get it back”.
The aircraft on the stop sign resembled those from Banksy’s 2017 artwork Civilian Drone Strike, which depicted a trio of drones bombing a childlike drawing of a house. It was auctioned at Art The Arms Fair and raised £205,000 for Reprieve and Campaign Against Arms Trade.”
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/dec/22/banksy-artwork-stolen-south-london-peckham
Banksy started the rescue organisation Louise Michel in the summer of 2020, and since then, the ship M.V. Louise Michel has been saving lives in the Mediterranean Sea.
For more information: https://mvlouisemichel.org
By purchasing some high-quality Banksy-designed ephemera, you can now support the rescue effort. All sales directly support Louise Michel’s ongoing work. Link to shop: https://shop.mvlouisemichel.org
It’s an important twist in an ongoing legal battle between Team Banksy and Full Colour Black (FCB) – a licensing company specializing in popular images for international retailers.
As reported by The Sunday Times on 8 December 2023:
The street artist is being sued for defamation but is seeking to maintain his anonymity through a convention from 1886
This week the artist filed an application for anonymity with reference to the Berne Convention, and three other arguments: that his work will become less valuable, that he will no longer be free to criticise others — especially those in power — and that his family will come under increased scrutiny.
A judge has ruled that Banksy can remain anonymous in defamation proceedings after the controversial street artist relied on a 19th-century treaty to remain masked. In the latest development of a £1.4 million claim brought by a greeting cards publisher over a social media post from Banksy, Mr Justice Nicklin gave a boost to the artist’s defence on Friday.
To maintain Banksy’s anonymity, the artist’s legal team had relied on a dusty treaty drafted more than 100 years ago in Switzerland to protect the copyright of artists. While Banksy’s lawyers relied on three other arguments to maintain his anonymity, it is his reference to the Berne Convention that his lawyers found most legally appealing.
Enrico Bonadio, a reader in intellectual property law, said that while the Berne Convention focused on copyright law, it could be interpreted as giving legal backing to anonymity for artists in a range of civil proceedings. However, he said the matter was a “grey area” in law that would need to be decided by the courts.
Andrew Gallagher and his company Full Colour Black (FCB) have filed a lawsuit accusing “the artist known as Banksy” of defamation, with the co-defendant named as Pest Control Ltd, the company that sells his artwork. In written submissions, Gallagher’s lawyers have stated that he “reserves the right to seek an order that [Banksy] identifies himself for the purposes of these proceedings”. Gallagher has the option open to him to make an application to remove the artist’s anonymity. His company, Brandalised, licensed a photograph of Banksy’s work to the fashion retailer Guess last autumn for use in its Regent Street shop window.
In a now-deleted post made on November 18, Banksy’s Instagram account, which has 12 million followers, used an image of a Guess shop window with the words: “Alerting all shoplifters. Please go to GUESS on Regent Street. They’ve helped themselves to my art without asking. How can it be wrong to do the same to their clothes?
In its High Court claim, FCB, the trading company of Brandalised, alleged that it “contained defamatory words which referred to, and were understood to refer to, the claimant”. Now FCB is seeking damages and an injunction preventing further alleged defamation.
“[Banksy’s] post, by way of innuendo, meant and was understood to mean that the claimant had stolen Banksy’s artwork by licensing images to Guess without permission or other legal authority,” argues the company in its claim.”
As the title indicates, the book covers the early shows. It is edited by art historian Uli Blanché and published by Heidelberg University. The book has some very well-written essays by real experts, and a wealth of fantastic information. It’s downloadable for free here: https://books.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/arthistoricum/catalog/view/1201/2062/108482
As reported by BBC on 21 November:
The artist – at the time in his 20s – was interviewed by Mr Wrench, a former BBC arts correspondent, in the summer of 2003 to mark the opening of Banksy’s Turf War show in east London. An edited version was aired that July on the BBC’s PM programme. However, not all of the material was used. Many years later, Mr Wrench was listening to The Banksy Story podcast, and this prompted him to recover the full interview on a minidisc in his house.
The never-heard-before interview includes Banksy’s thoughts on his own art, on Charles Saatchi and many other issues. You can listen to it here:
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0gtsw3k
The full BBC series “The Banksy Story” can be found here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m001nwhs
There is little doubt that the person interviewed by BBC Radio is the same guy with a Bristol accent who was interviewed on camera by ITV reporter Haig Gordon before the opening of Turf War in July 2003 in London:
Banksy’s unaltered voice in the two interviews above is strikingly similar to the voice of the person presented as Banksy in another BBC interview three years earlier at the Severnshed exhibition in February 2000:
This line of thought in the “Who is Banksy?” mystery is supported by some of the photographs in Steve Lazarides’ book Captured from 2019, especially one on page 154 depicting a Banksy consistent with the alleged Banksy in the resuscitated ITV interview. Whether this person is “one of the Banksys” or “the Banksy” will never be known. The puzzle is part of the overall artistic expression, in which we all play a role.
As Steve Lazarides put it in an interview for the French documentary Most wanted from 2019:
According to Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, the Cut & Run exhibition attracted 180,000 visitors during its 10-week run. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-6663225
Team Banksy hinted that when the show opened, they would take it on tour if it “proved popular.” On 26 August, Pest Control Office confirmed that there would be a tour, and they are now soliciting suggestions for locations and venues. Hopefully, this will bring an end to all the touring exhibitions with fakes and reproductions.
Banksy unofficial 