I don’t have much to add beyond what’s already been written elsewhere about the new Banksy pieces or pieces that have been all over the news in the last few days. But I do want to link to some of the best and most up-to-date articles I’ve seen covering these pieces.
In case you somehow haven’t heard, Banksy posted a new piece to his website earlier this week, shown above. Kinda looks like an old cover of The Atlantic, but it’s a well done piece and I imagine The Atlantic wasn’t the first to do something along those lines either. The manager of a financially struggling Bistol youth club located just down the road from where the piece was installed quickly removed the piece from the wall (which he does not own) in the hopes of selling it. Animal argues that this isn’t so bad. Then the piece was put on display in the youth club. The club’s CCTV cameras may have caught a really useless image of Banksy installing the piece. Then, the youth club manager started receiving death threats, so he worked with the city of Bristol to have the work removed by police and placed on display in the Bristol Museum.
Another piece, a possible Banksy, has appeared in Cheltenham, near the headquarters of British NSA-equivalent GCHQ. While this piece hasn’t shown up on Banksy’s website, it looks like a Banksy to me. And I’m not the only person who thinks so. If we’re wrong and it’s not a Banksy, okay, but whoever the artist is is at least trying harder than most to emulate Banksy in concept, technique and placement. Given this piece’s proximity to the GCHQ headquarters, I really love the spy theme. Oh, and some people tried to vandalize the vandalism and then someone else washed off the paint… So begins the saga of this piece’s destruction.
Photos from banksy.co.uk and by Banksy Locations & Tours and Kathryn