Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing.
Girl With Balloon is perhaps Banksy’s most notable and iconic work.
Girl With Balloon is perhaps Banksy’s most notable and iconic work, demonstrating the graffiti stencil technique he has become renowned for. A 2017 public poll ranked Girl with Balloon as the UK’s number one favorite artwork.
Girl with Balloon appeared for the first time as a mural on Waterloo Bridge, in South Bank, London. This striking visual was accompanied by the quotation “There is always hope”.
Even though most of Banksy‘s early murals have disappeared a long time ago, the artist had already documented them in the few books he self-published and released.
Banksy‘s first known large wall mural was The Mild Mild West, painted in 1999 to cover advertising of a former solicitors’ office on Stokes Croft in Bristol.
Banksy moved from Bristol to London somewhere in the end of 1999.
Those early years are very prolific for the artist who left a lot of works in the streets of London.
Banksy visited Palestine as early as in August 2005 and painted seven large murals on the newly erected West Bank barrier.
Banksy’s feelings about the barrier are made explicit in a statement which says the wall “essentially turns Palestine into the world’s largest open prison.”
Kissing Coppers portrays two British policeman kissing.
The two police officers are painted in black and white. Both individuals are shown in full uniform with evident handcuffs and a baton around their respective belts. This portrayal of same-sex intimacy is a common feature of art dating as far back as the 16th century in Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling.
In London, over the weekend of 3–5 May 2008, Banksy hosted an exhibition called The Cans Festival
At that occasion Banksy created Cave Painting Removal portraying a man, most probably a city worker, who seems to be cleaning a wall covered with what appears to be some prehistoric drawings… Indeed the art appears to be some ancient cave paintings of warriors and various animals (horses, deer, bison), very much like the caves at Lascaux in France, now seen as a great treasure for humanity…
Banksy visited New Orleans, three years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, in August 2008.
The artist used the still-tattered urban fabric of New Orleans as an eloquent backdrop for his critiques of the situation and left around 15 stencils. Most of them have long disappeared but are still present in so many ways.
The world premiere of Exit Through The Gift Shop occurred at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah
The ‘ING’ portion of the “PARKING” sign has been whitewashed out to emphasize the word “PARK”. Banksy then stenciled a young girl on a swing hanging to the letter A.
The artist most probably comments on the lack of places for kids to play safely in what is a fairly rough area of Los Angeles. One can also view this work as a demonstration that there is no need for anything special to have fun and enjoy oneself whatever the environment we live in.
On 1 October 2013, Banksy began a one-month show on the streets of New-York
The Street Is In Play is the first of Banksy’s pieces from “Better Out That In” his month long “residency” in New York City in October 2013.