Street Art

You might have seen his/her/their unique work on streets, walls and bridges of cities throughout the world.

His/her/their graffiti comprises of rebellious and satirical epigrams, dark humour and a distinctive stencilling technique.

He/she/they is/are Banksy, an anonymous UK-based graffiti artist. There have been numerous rumours and theories as to Banksy’s identity, some even suggested that Banksy is actually a collective of artists rather than a single person.

Wikipedia described Banksy as a graffiti artist, a political activist, a film director and a painter.

This is an excerpt of what they’ve written on him/her/them:

“Banksy’s work was born out of the Bristol underground scene which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. According to author and graphic designer Tristan Manco and the book Home Sweet Home, Banksy “was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier technician, he trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s.” Observers have noted that his style is similar to Blek le Rat, who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris and members of the anarcho-punk band Crass, which maintained a graffiti stencil campaign on the London Tube System in the late 1970s and early 1980s and is active today.

Known for his contempt for the government in labeling graffiti as vandalism, Banksy displays his art on public surfaces such as walls and even going as far as to build physical prop pieces. Banksy does not sell photos of street graffiti directly himself; however, art auctioneers have been known to attempt to sell his street art on location and leave the problem of its removal in the hands of the winning bidder. Banksy’s first film, Exit through the Gift Shop, billed as “the world’s first street art disaster movie,” made its debut at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The film was released in the UK on 5 March 2010. In January 2011, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film.”

Identity aside, I think Banksy’s work is beautiful and carries deep messages.

Here are some of my favourite of his/her/their work:

[Note: I did not take any of the photos below and I do not know who the photographer is/are; if I did, I would have given them credit]