some sort of Banksy retrospective
Now we know where all the animals came from. The animal kingdom series obviously has a lot to do with the summer riots in London in the previous weeks. One can discern a stoic approach: nature is the only true force, and when you encounter adversity, face it with resilience, humour, and a charitable spirit.
BBC News did a feature on the Animal Kingdom series:
The second week of the Animal Kingdom series starts with a life-size rhino mounting a Nissan Micra with a cone on the bonnet. Old-school Banksy. This is getting better every day!
The piranhas appeared on Sunday morning at a police box near St. Paul’s Cathedral, in the City of London. As expected, Banksy confirmed the piece at 1 p.m. sharp on his Instagram.
The leopard is doing the morning stretch while sharpening the claws on a scratching post. Someone might say it’s a panther, but isn’t the panther just a leopard with black fur?
Anyway, there are quite a few leopards in the Banksy imagery:
Banksy’s handling office, Pest Control, issued a statement on the meaning of the London series of animals:
“The artist’s vision is simple: the latest street art has been designed to cheer up the public during a period when the news headlines have been bleak, and light has often been harder to spot than shade. Banksy’s hope, it is understood, is that the uplifting works cheer people with a moment of unexpected amusement, as well as to gently underline the human capacity for creative play, rather than for destruction and negativity. Some recent theorising about the deeper significance of each new image has been way too involved, Banksy’s support organisation, Pest Control Office, has indicated.”
Banksy confirmed the two pelicans at Bonners Fish Bar in Walthamstow with British punctuality, 1 p.m. sharp. The novelty of today’s piece is that it’s not monochromatic; they’ve employed a few spray-strokes of white in the pelican beak.
This is the fourth day of some kind of series, and we don’t really know how it’s going to unfold. Very exciting!! Like previous days, it’s a one-colour, one-layer stencil of creatures from the Animal Kingdom trapped in the urban landscape. The timing of the posts is also worth mentioning: it’s always 1 p.m. sharp on his Instagram, @banksy.
Banksy continues his London residency with three graceful monkeys underneath the Overground bridge at Brick Lane, not far from the Truman Brewery Markets.
There have been plenty of monkeys in Banksy’s past; here are a few early ones:
Banksy confirmed yet another piece from the Animal Kingdom on his Instagram around 1 p.m. on Tuesday. The exact address is 10 Edith Terrace in Chelsea, a few hundred meters east of Stamford Bridge. Could the elephants be the second piece in a series that started yesterday?
Banksy’s first elephant in the room at Barely Legal in Los Angeles, September 2006:
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 unofficial 