![]() On the Banksy trail I meet lots of devotees. They make me smile and feel optimistic about the possibilities of shared dreams and common ownership. They feel personal, as if they are just for me, and they feel public as if they are a gift for everyone. When I do come across them, surreptitiously peeping out of an alley or boldy emblazoned on a wall, I find it hard to contain myself. Since spotting my first few Banksies, I have been desperately seeking out more. It is easy to become addicted to his work. He is somehow managing to straddle the commercial, artistic and street worlds. (Come back a few days later, and people will have obediently tagged the wall.)īanksy has branched out recently - he designed the cover of the Blur album, Think Tank, and tomorrow is the opening night of Turf War, his first gallery show in Britain. On establishment buildings he may sign "By Order National Highways Agency This Wall Is A Designated Graffiti Area". At traditional landmarks, he often signs "This is not a photo opportunity". Sometimes there are just words, in the same chunky typeface - puns and ironies, statements and incitements. ![]() He signs his pieces in a chunky, swirling typeface. His black and white stencils are beautiful, witty and gently subversive: policemen with smiley faces, rats with drills, monkeys with weapons of mass destruction (or, when the mood takes him, mass disruption) little girls cuddling up to missiles, police officers walking great flossy poodles, Samuel Jackson and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction firing bananas instead of guns, a beefeater daubing "Anarchy" on the walls. The day he goes public is the day the graffiti ends. Banksy is Britain's most celebrated graffiti artist, but anonymity is vital to him because graffiti is illegal.
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