1. Bancs is a pseudonymous Englandbased graffiti artist,
political activist, film director, and painter.
2. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine
dark humour with graffity done in a distinctive stencilling
technique. Such artistic works of political and social commentary
have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities
throughout the world
3. 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.Xavier Prou (Blek le Rat)"Ballerina" by Blek le Rat at the
941 Geary Gallery, San Francisco
4. Early career (19922001) Banksy was inspired by local artists
and his work was part of the larger Bristol underground scene with
Nick Walker, Inkie and 3D.From the start he used stencils as
elements of his freehand pieces, too. By 2000 he had turned to the
art of stencilling after realising how much less time it took to
complete a piece. He claims he changed to stencilling while he was
hiding from the police under a rubbish lorry, when he noticed the
stencilled serial number and by employing this technique, he soon
became more widely noticed for his art around Bristol and
London.[He played football with the Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls in
the 1990s and toured with the club to Mexico in 2001. In July 2011
one of Banksy's early works, Gorilla in a Pink Mask, which had been
a prominent landmark on the exterior wall of a former social club
in Eastville for over ten years, was unknowingly painted over after
the premises became a Muslim cultural
5. In August 2004, Banksy produced a quantity of spoof British
10 notes substituting the picture of the Queen's head with Diana,
Princess of Wales's head and changing the text "Bank of England" to
"Banksy of England." Someone threw a large wad of these into a
crowd at Notting Hill Carnival that year, which some recipients
then tried to spend in local shops. These notes were also given
with invitations to a Santa's Ghetto exhibition by Pictures on
Walls. The individual notes have since been selling on eBay for
about 200 each. A wad of the notes were also thrown over a fence
and into the crowd near the NME signing tent at The Reading
Festival. A limited run of 50 signed posters containing ten uncut
notes were also produced and sold by Pictures on Walls for 100 each
to commemorate the death of Princess Diana. One of these sold in
October 2007 at Bonhams auction house in London for 24,000.
6. Banksy held an exhibition called Barely Legal, billed as a
"three-day vandalised warehouse extravaganza" in Los Angeles, on
the weekend of 16 September 2006. The exhibition featured a live
"elephant in a room," painted in a pink and gold floral wallpaper
pattern, which, according to leaflets handed out at the exhibition,
was intended to draw attention to the issue of world poverty.
Although the Animal Services Department had issued a permit for the
elephant, after complaints from animal rights activists, the
elephant appeared unpainted on the final day. Its owners rejected
claims of mistreatment and said that the elephant had done "many,
many movies. She's used to makeup." Banksy also made artwork
displaying Queen Victoria as a lesbian and satirical pieces that
incorporated art made by Andy Warhol and Leonardo da Vinci.
7. The Banksy effect (20062007)After Christina Aguilera bought
an original of Queen Victoria as a lesbian and two prints for
25,000, on 19 October 2006, a set of Kate Moss paintings sold in
Sotheby's London for 50,400, setting an auction record for Banksy's
work. The six silk-screen prints, featuring the model painted in
the style of Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe pictures, sold for five
times their estimated value. His stencil of a green Mona Lisa with
real paint dripping from her eyes sold for 57,600 at the same
auction In December, journalist Max Foster coined the phrase, "the
Banksy effect," to illustrate how interest in other street artists
was growing on the back of Banksy's success.