King of Excellent (according to Scaryduck)

Friday, August 1

Banksy

We don't get much graffiti around here. The scribblings that we do get are normally something along the lines of "English out" or "C*nt", which outlines the intellectual level of the local 'artists.' For this reason, we don't hear of Banksy much. Everyone else was raving about him 3 years ago, and yet it was only in the past 6 months did I stumble across his antics. I only stumbled across him when I first saw this...


The rioter with the Bouquet of flowers instead of the petrol bomb I consider genius. It is such a bitter sweet exclamation, and sums up his work. I then sat up, and started to note other works of his. The biggest question of all is who is he? The general consensus is he's Robert Banks, a former art student from Bristol.

This is supposedly him, but I'm not able to say if it is or if it isn't. Meanwhile his sense of humour has kicked up a couple of gears. He particularly likes to make a mockery of the people in authority.

This was, and still is, one of my favourite statements. For ages it was my desktop wallpaper, and shows just how much a single image can say something. Another favourite is the one painted in Israel, on one of their 'control the masses' concrete walls.

I remember doing similar to this, legally I hasten to add, as a project at school. We painted a break through a concrete wall, to show a large treasure trove underneath. The other thing that has tickled me about Banksy is his ability to take well known 'classics' and add his own monicker, once again making a statement about today's society. Apparently he even took these pictures and stuck them into real art galleries and museums, to see if the local toffee nosed twats could identify 'real' art from his pseudo art.


And finally, something that summed him up and made me laugh out loud. Take a blank advertisement hoarding, and let him loose on it. What could he say?