Another Banksy destroyed

This blog has followed the travels and travails of the artist Banksy for over two years.

It seems that another significant Banksy work has been destroyed by over-zealous cleaners contracted by the city council of Melbourne. Reported in The Age,

MELBOURNE City Council sent the cleaners into Hosier Lane on Thursday to tidy up the rat-infested garbage, but they caught the wrong rat.

A request by deputy lord mayor Susan Riley to clean up the laneway, world famous for its colourful street art, inadvertently resulted in the painting over of a stencil of a rat by the celebrated British graffiti artist Banksy.

''I went down there on Thursday and saw the cleaners and said: 'You realise you have just painted over a Banksy?','' Hosier Lane resident Kerry Butcher told The Age yesterday. ''And they said: 'We are just doing what we're told'.''

Read more.

A picture of the work, a parachuting rat, can be seen here.

Nevermind, it was just paint over stencil. Banksy can always recreate it.

Banksy at Sundance

A new documentary by Banksy will premier at the Sundance Film Festival called Exit Throught the Gift Shop.

Trailer


See also report by Animal NY on Shepard Fairey's spoiler.

Apparently, to coincide, there are reports that Banksy's works have been appearing in Park City, Utah - the home of Sundance. See The Salt Lake Tribute.




(photos via Animal NY)

Unfortunately, City Park officials have ordered the removal of most of the works (reported by Deseret News).

Banksy's sinking feeling

I've previously written about a number of Banksy works being destroyed.

Londonist has reported four new Banksy works in Camden (north London).

One in particular, located next to Regent's Canal, appears to be a statement to climate change skeptics, or those who are stonewalling political action.


(photo by Luke MacGregor, Reuters via ABC)

Banksy 'grafitti' attracts graffiti

Reported by the BBC (2 November 2009), a Banksy work in south London has been defaced

Banksy mural defaced during vote

A mural by graffiti artist Banksy has been defaced in south London while a public vote was taking place calling for its preservation.

Sutton Council asked residents to vote on whether the "punk" mural should stay on its Beddington Farm Road site.

More than 93% of the 250 voters urged the council to keep it but as the vote was taking place, the work was defaced by graffiti "taggers".

The council is deciding whether the mural can be restored.

The mural showed a punk standing by a box labelled IEAK - an anagram of the furniture store Ikea - apparently reading instructions on how to put together a graffiti slogan.

Despite usually operating a zero-tolerance stance on graffiti, the council made an exception for this piece of work.

Councillor Colin Hall said: "We believe in democracy and wanted local people to decide what should happen to the Banksy.

"Sadly someone decided to take it into their own hands."

He added: "The image actually criticised mindless graffiti so perhaps it isn't surprising that the sort of people who do that sort of thing should attack it."

The council is consulting the building's owner to decide whether the mural can be restored.

Acclaimed artist Banksy has gained an international following for his graffiti and exhibitions, the latest of which drew 300,000 visitors to Bristol earlier this year.

In September, Hackney Council in east London partially covered a Banksy mural with black paint by mistake.

Photos by Robin Gunningham via Gawker





Ironic.

another Banksy destroyed

The Guardian has reported that a (yet another) Banksy work has been just about been destroyed.

Banksy artwork painted over in Hackney

Caricature of royal family that graced building in east London for eight years is removed by council

Adam Gabbatt
Thursday 3 September 2009 18.54 BST

Before and after pictures of a Banksy artwork in Stoke Newington, London. Photograph: Hackney Citizen

Council officials have painted over a Banksy graffito sketch from which a reworked version was derived as the cover artwork for the 2003 single Crazy Beat by the band Blur.

The artwork – a cartoon of the royal family waving from a balcony – had been left untouched on the side of a block of flats in Stoke Newington, east London, for eight years before Hackney council intervened last week.

Officials removed the sketch by Banksy – whose works have sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds – as his largest exhibition to date, in Bristol, prepared to close. The exhibition has attracted over 300,000 visitors since 13 June, raising £45,000 in museum donations, and is estimated to have been worth £10m to the local economy.

Banksy vs Bristol Museum featured more than 100 works of art. The notoriously secretive artist was reported to have been secretly adding new installations to the exhibition by night.

A Stoke Newington blogger known only as Kris broke the news of the artwork's removal.

She reported that council workers said they had told their employers about the importance of the artwork. "We knew it was a Banksy, love. It's a Stoke Newington landmark; we know that. We told them, but they wouldn't listen," wrote Kris.

The owner of the building, Sophie Attrill, told the Hackney Gazette that she was devastated when she saw the wall being painted.

"I looked out the window and saw what they were doing, so I ran downstairs and I told them to stop," said Attrill. Hackney council said it tried to contact Attrill before ordering the artwork to be painted over, but notices asking her to remove or cover up the piece had not reached her address due to the Land Registry having the incorrect contact details.

Alan Laing, the Hackney council cabinet member for neighbourhoods, said the council removed all graffiti regardless of artistic value.

"Hackney council does not make a judgment call on whether graffiti is art or not, our task is to keep Hackney's streets clean. We made four attempts to contact the owner of the property to inform her of our intention to remove the graffiti," said Laing.

"We are now speaking with her about how to resolve the issue."

It's not the first time Banksy has had his street art removed by authorities. In October last year Westminster city council removed a mural from Newman Street in central London after the deputy council leader, Robert Davis, said keeping it would be "condoning" graffiti.

In 2007 a piece showing a monkey preparing to blow up a bunch of bananas at Waterloo station in London was painted over by staff.

See also BBC News. No wonder the building owner (and by definition, owner of the artwork) was upset. The Banksy work was reportedly valued at £200,000.

Perhaps these local councils need to keep up with the times.

Banksy versus Bristol Museum

This blog has been following Banksy since early last year. His hometown of Bristol has officially recognised him in a nice way by exhibiting his works at its City Museum & Art Gallery. Not initially anyway as the exhibition was planned by the museum in secret, kept from city officials. See BBC News

Banksy in secret exhibition stunt

Graffiti artist Banksy has pulled off an audacious stunt amid tight secrecy to stage his biggest ever exhibition.

A burned-out ice-cream van is among 100 works Banksy has installed at Bristol's museum, replacing many of the museum's regular artefacts.

The reason the museum was closed was kept secret from top council officials.

Banksy said: "This is the first show I've ever done where taxpayers' money is being used to hang my pictures up rather than scrape them off."

Staged in the council-owned City Museum and Art Gallery, Banksy v Bristol Museum features animatronics, installations and a sensory display.

"This show is my vision of the future, to which many people will say: 'You should have gone to Specsavers'", Banksy added.

The exhibition and its location have been a closely-guarded secret since October, with just a couple of museum officials in the loop.

"I think we may have dragged them down to our level rather than being elevated to theirs," said Banksy of the subterfuge involved in staging the show in his home city.

'Megastar'

Museum director Kate Brindley said it was a huge relief to finally be able to talk about the exhibition, and admitted they had taken a "risk".

Plans for the summer show were kept from Bristol City Council chiefs until Friday - the day before it was due to open.

THAT WAS SOME SECRET! Jon Kay, West of England correspondent Whatever you think of Banksy, his art and his stunts, what he's done here is pretty extraordinary.

Normally this grand building is home to artefacts and paintings remembering Bristol's maritime history, but today the Edwardian halls are filled with Banksy's unique blend of anger and humour. All this - and hardly anybody knew about it.

Exactly WHO Banksy is remains shrouded in mystery - we do know he grew up in Bristol, and this free exhibition is said to be his way of thanking and rewarding the city.

Many people are proud of him - he's become one of Bristol's most famous (and notorious) sons - others are bound to question whether a guy who spent his youth spray-painting walls deserves to be given this platform.

Either way, you've got to hand it to him - he's done it again!

Bristol has had a love-hate relationship with Banksy since he started stencilling on the city's walls in the 1990s. There is likely to be criticism of the decision to stage an official expo of his work.

"We ran a bit of a risk," said Ms Brindley, "but we knew that it was just the right thing for the city.

"Equally there's so many people in Bristol who just love Banksy, and internationally. He's a megastar.

"We're a gallery that wants to work with contemporary artists - he's our home-grown hero."

The artist himself was involved in setting up the exhibits and came to the museum to oversee its installation, but staff were unaware who he was among the crew setting up the show.

Although Bristol has seen work by Banksy adorn the city's walls, this is his first official indoor exhibition in the city since 2000.

That show was held at the Severnshed restaurant on the waterfront and featured several paintings which have since gone on to sell for thousands of pounds at auction.

Banksy has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles and Bethlehem.

He became famous after a series of "guerrilla" stunts which saw him paint the West Bank barrier and put an inflatable figure of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner at Disney World.

It was Bristol where he first made his mark though, with a series of graffiti paintings on iconic local buildings such as the city council headquarters, an M32 bridge and the Thekla floating nightclub.

His work has since become highly collectable, and has attracted buyers including Brad Pitt and Robbie Williams.

I really like this one (below).



More pictures from BBC News

Banksy work destroyed

I first wrote about Banksy earlier this year and mentioned his work called 'Little Diver' in Melbourne (painted in 2003).

Unfortunately, some vandal has destroyed this work. See The Age

The painter painted: Melbourne loses its treasured Banksy

Janae Houghton
December 14, 2008

The Little Diver by Banksy (right) and after the vandals struck (left)

HE IS a small, faceless man and was supposedly well protected with a piece of perspex plastic, but famous laneway graffiti artwork 'Banksy's little diver' has been destroyed by vandals.

It is believed the less-than-one-metre-tall grey figure, wearing a duffle coat and diving mask, was stencilled in 2003 when the famous British graffiti artist known just as Banksy visited Melbourne.

The little diver lives on a wall, surrounded by rats and rubbish, on the back of the Nicholas Building on the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane.

A piece of screwed-in plastic, paid for by the building's owners, has protected him from the elements and damage since April this year.

But someone has ruined the iconic little diver, by tipping silver paint behind the plastic protector and tagging 'Banksy woz ere' on the plastic, potentially ruining the artwork forever.

Earlier this year, the little diver's potential value went up when another Banksy artwork on a London wall was sold for £208,000 ($A472,528) on an eBay auction.

Banksy, the elusive street artist, keeps his identity secret and hardly ever gives media interviews.

Fans and buyers of his works include Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Christina Aguilera.

http://www.banksy.co.uk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy

What makes this senseless act of vandalism even worse, is that the vandal knew it was a Banksy.

Even so, Banksy would have been aware of the risk in leaving art in such publicly exposed places.

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This week is going to be a very strange one at work.

Banksy the vandal

Banksy painted a seven metre (23 feet) high mural on a building wall at Newman Street (near Oxford Circus) in London.



The local jurisdiction, the Westminster City Council doesn't like it, calling it graffiti and want it removed.

See
- Graffiti artist Banksy pulls off most audacious stunt to date - despite being watched by CCTV (Daily Mail, 14 April 2008)
- Writing is on the wall for Banksy's west end mural as council demands it be painted over (Daily Mail, 24 October 2008)
- Council orders Banksy art removal (BBC News, 24 October 2008)
- Westminster bid to remove Banksy art stalled (Local Government Chronicle, 24 October 2008)

Painting (stencil) on a wall without permission is vandalism. However, if the painting is a valued piece of art, then removing it is even worse.

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Today was another busy day of de-cluttering and spring cleaning.

Banksy revealed

I wrote about the 'graffiti' artist Banksy earlier this year.

It seems that the Daily Mail has apparently uncovered his identity.

The Daily Mail claims that Banksy is Robin Gunningham


I'm not sure about the resemblance to this supposed self-portrait


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I was so not ready to go back to work, which has also been busy, and its only Monday.

public art goes private - Banksy

A wall painted by British 'graffiti' artist Banksy was sold on eBay for £208,100 (AUD453,700 or USD410,830). The wall is located at Portobello Road in London. The vendor Luti Fagbenle actually owns the wall as part of the building which houses his media production company. Personally, I think that Banksy should be paid a 'royalty' percentage.

See reporting by Reuters

Some of Banksy's other works are also just as amazing, and even cheeky.

Balloon Girl - Always Hope

Pissing Guard

Kissing Coppers

In Melbourne (Australia), one of Banksy's works, 'Little Diver', painted in 2003 during a visit, has suddenly become valuable. Adorned on the rear of the Nicholas Building on the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane, which is also heritage listed, city officials now want to protect the artwork.


Andrew McDonald, director of the Citylights public art project does not believe it should be preserved.

"It's strange because graffiti isn't meant to last, it's ephemeral," Mr McDonald said. "So trying to save it is a pretty funny thing to do. I'm sure that irony's not lost on Banksy. And there's a fair bit of irony in somebody selling a wall."

Reported in The Age

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Happy Wednesday.