Banksy is a graffiti artist, film director, political activist and painter from Bristol.

According to the book “Home Sweet Home” he was born 1974 in Bristol and became involved with graffiti in the late 1980s early 1990s. He started off free hand, running around with the dry breadz crew, by 2000 he decided that free hand took up too much time and his technique developed to using full stencils, after hiding from police under a dumpster, so the story goes. 

His work usually features striking and humorous images occasionally combined with slogans, some are anti-war, anti-capitalism, and anti-establishment and often include rats, apes, policemen, soldiers, children and the elderly.

                                          

In 2004, he created spoof ten pound notes with Lady Diana’s head instead of the queens, and changed “Bank of England” to Banksy of England.
                      
The notes were reportedly flung into a crowd at Notting Hill carnival that year and at the Reading Festival. Some people tried to use them to buy things, and some were successful. The notes have gone on to be sold for two hundred pounds each on eBay, and a limited run of fifty signed posters containing ten uncut notes went on sale for a hundred pounds each to commemorate Lady Diana’s death. One of these sold in 2007 for £24,000.

In 2005, he pulled off his most daring stunt by spray painting nine images on the Israeli west bank wall, getting himself noticed worldwide and even making the news.

           

 

In 2006, he produced six silk screen prints of Kate moss in the style of Andy Warhols Marilyn Monroe, these sold in an auction house in London for fifty thousand pounds, three times the expected price and set an auction record for his art.

                       

From 2006 to 2009, he stirred up the art world with local councils leaving it up to their Towns people to decide whether his art should stay or go. He went on to America leaving artwork in New York and New Orleans and other major states. While in America he spray painted a picture of a Klu Klux Klan member hanging in Alabama, and left a blow up doll dressed as a Gutanamo bay prisoner in the orange jump suite cuffed with the black hood over his head in Disney land. The park took it quite serious even shutting down some of the rides.

In 2010, Banksy made a documentary on street art called, “Exit through the gift shop”.                         
The documentary becomes less about Banksy and more about Mr Brainwash, who by the end of the film has become a successful street artist selling art for thousands of pounds. A lot of people believe this is another one of Banksys stunts. Exit through the gift shop went on to be nominated for an Oscar and on the nights leading up to the ceremony Banksy left his art work all over Los Angeles. Many people believed he would show up to collect the award due to him apparently being quoted saying, “This is a big surprise I don’t agree with the concept of award ceremonies but I am prepared to make an exception for the one I am nominated for, the last time there was a naked man in my house covered in gold paint it was me.” Unfortunately he did not win. Banksy later left artwork in Weston, UK, of a little girl holding the Oscar and pouting, apparently it is a girl who dropped and damaged her dads Oscar, Simon Eagan, Co-producer of the king’s speech.

Banksy inspires me by the way he has taken the art world by storm. His street art asks questions and provokes answers, this has acted almost as Banksy, advertising that along with the fact nobody knows who he is creates a mystery, as people always want to know what they are not allowed to. Because he is not there to give answers, the public are left to discuss their ideas and what they think it means, again all adding to the buzz that is Banksy. His artwork now sells for hundreds of thousands of pounds and I believe due to him, good street art is now appreciated more as art and less as vandalism. Banksy is not only a successful artist, the attention he has brought to street art has brought it from the underground and helped it be accepted in mainstream art. Now no art collector’s collection is complete without a Genuine Banksy.