“Next week the four people charged with pulling down Colston’s statue in Bristol are going on trial. I’ve made some souvenir shirts to mark the occasion. Available today 11th December from various outlets in the city (all proceeds to the defendants so they can go for a pint). One per person, £25 each plus VAT. Details on the Ujima Radio breakfast show from 9am.”
Photograph: @banksy on Instagram
A few hours later, the first Colston tees started popping up on eBay at £ 1,250 apiece. At 4 PM, Banksy’s PR woman Jo Brooks communicated: “Banksy t-shirt drops in Bristol have now sold out.”
It has been closed for 20 months, but today The Walled Off Hotel posted a hopeful message on Facebook:
“We are pleased to inform you that the hotel doors are open for visits and overnight stays as of today. The museum is still closed due to some maintenance work. Welcome everybody.”
There seem to be some novelties on the ground floor. The section with CCTV cameras has moved to the left of the reception, where the “Mediterranean Seaview” triptych hung before it was donated to charity. Another new piece is the wood-carved model of Jerusalem’s Old Town made by the late Tawfiq Salsaa. The model was on display at Santas Ghetto in 2007 and also at Banksy vs Bristol Museum in 2009.
The wood-carved model of Jerusalem by Tawfiq Salsaa. Photo: @walledoff – The Walled Off Hotel on Facebook
The donation was made public on December 4 at an exhibition curated by Grayson Perry at Bristol Museum. Banksy contributed the original stencil to the piece he did on the wall of the Reading GAOL prison in March 2021. The idea is that the Reading Council now sells the stencil and uses the proceeds to turn the derelict prison into a permanent art centre. It’s expected to fetch up to GBP 10 million in a private sale. In Banksy’s own words:
“I had very little interest in Reading until I was on a rail replacement bus service that went past the jail. It’s rare to find an uninterrupted 500m-long paintable surface slap bang in the middle of a town; I literally clambered over the passenger next to me to get a closer look. I promised myself I’d paint the wall even before I knew what it was. I’m passionate about it now, though. Oscar Wilde is the patron saint of smashing two contrasting ideas together to create magic. Converting the place that destroyed him into a refuge for art feels so perfect we have to do it.”
The Oscar Wilde stencil on display at Bristol Museum.
“We can confirm that the artwork at the end of The Outlaws was an original Banksy, and that Christopher Walken painted over that artwork during the filming of this scene, ultimately destroying it,” a spokesperson for the BBC said. The show is written and directed by Bristolian comedian Stephen Merchant and is filmed in Bristol.
From BBC’s website:
“The Outlaws, written and directed by Stephen Merchant, stars Hollywood veteran Walken as one of a group of minor criminals refurbishing a building for their community service. The last episode sees his character uncover the Banksy rat and two spray cans behind some wooden boards, and ask his supervisor if he should paint over it. The probation officer is looking the other way so doesn’t realise it’s a Banksy and tells him all graffiti must be painted over, which he does.” https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-59236187
Love is in the Bin is certainly one of the most talked-about pieces of art in recent times. It’s also a genuinely multi-genre piece of art, having transformed from a regular painting to performance art and finally into a piece of conceptual art. A true representation of what Banksy is today?
After a five-month recess, Banksy is back at it with ten brilliant pieces in Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, two adjacent towns on the eastern coast not far from Norwich. The pieces went up around 6 August but were confirmed a week later, on 13 August.
The EU’s trademark court, EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office), ruled against Banksy’s struggle to protect his iconic images from being reproduced on shoddy merchandise.
The present case was about the Laugh Now image, which Banksy’s handling agent, Pest Control Office (PCO), registered as a trademark in November 2018. A year later, a UK-based greeting card company, Full Colour Black Limited, applied for the cancellation of the trademark. EUIPO has now ruled in favour of the greeting card company and decided that the Laugh Now trademark is “invalid in its entirety.” In September 2020, EUIPO invalidated Love is in the Air (or Flower Thrower) as a trademark. And there are more trademark disputes to come.
The main argument in the ruling is that a trademark holder must actively market and sell products with the trademark. EUIPO considers that Banksy and PCO haven’t done that: “From an examination of the evidence filed by both parties, it would appear that at the time of filing of the application for invalidity, the proprietor (or Banksy) had never actually marketed or sold any goods or services under the contested trademark.” Banksy’s GDP, a selling exhibition in Croydon in October 2019 ( www.grossdomesticproduct.com ) was an attempt to prove to the EUIPO that Banksy does indeed sell products under the disputed trademarks. But the EUIPO considers the GDP exhibition a way to circumvent the law and not a genuine effort to sell trademarked goods.
The greeting card company didn’t waste much time after the EUIPO ruling. Screenshots from http://www.fullclourblack.com
In one of the sections in the ruling, EUIPO shows an evident lack of knowledge: The EU’s trademark court alleges that Banksy “for the most part paints graffiti on other people’s property rather than to paint it on canvases or his own property”. What about the 1000+ studio pieces? Many of them are canvases. Or the printmaking, the art shows, the pranks, and the whole narrative?
Extract from a section of the EUIPO ruling where they show real lack of knowledge
After a 20-minute bidding duel, the hammer landed at GBP 14,400,000. With the Buyers Premium, the buyer has to cough up GBP 16,758,000 – a new auction record for a Banksy canvas. The seller is NHS and the Southampton University Hospital. According to the lot sheet from Christie’s: “The proceeds will be used to support the wellbeing of University Hospital Southampton staff and patients.”
The piece depicts Oscar Wilde escaping the Reading GAOL prison with his typewriter knot to the bedsheets. Oscar Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading GAOL prison after being convicted of gross indecency in 1895. Wilde was sentenced to two years of forced labour.
The piece has not yet been confirmed by Banksy’s usual channels, but it seems to be an authentic one. Maybe Banksy’s next big project is a book?
Oscar Wilde on the run. Photograph: Reading Chronicle
Banksy unofficial 