Damien Hirst’s Charity statue outside the Royal West of England Academy was tagged this week, but don’t worry, she’s got insurance. Scrub-scrub. In true Hirst fashion, the actual sculpture is a copy of a preexisting “collection box girl with teddy bear and leg in callipers” object. Hirst just made her huge, weigh 7000 lb and cost $2.5 million. He also “scuffed her appearance and burgled her charity box,” so, in a thematic sense, the “hoax” graffiti fits.
Following the accidental whitewash of Banksy’s ‘Gorrilla in a Pink Mask,’ a Bristol councilor wants to create a public art register and require official “permission to alter street artworks,” lest something pricey gets buffed. In general, seems like the measure applies to all street artists, but in practice, there’s only one who needs his stencils so ostentatiously protected.
Banksy’s 10-year-old ‘Gorilla in a Pink Mask’ piece on a side of a Muslim center in Bristol was accidentally buffed, when a site employee “mistook” the valuable “street art” for “vandalism” the Daily Mail reports. That’s right. An illegal stencil is clearly not vandalism when it’s slapped with a price tag worth thousands of pounds because someone famous did it… right? Read more »
Bristol’s City Museum & Art Gallery (home of last summer’s Banksy vs Bristol) and LA’s Corey Helford Gallery team up to bring 45 artists with visual assortments “from pop surreal and neo-figurative to street art” to the UK. Read more »
Undoubtedly encouraged by the $16 million tourist dollars brought in by the “Banksy Versus Bristol Museum” exhibition, the city plans to protect illegal paintings that the public votes to preserve. Before graffiti and street art is buffed, the City Council plans to post photos of the illicit art to its website for public comment. Except for “offensive and unsightly graffiti,” work that “[makes] a positive contribution to the local environment” will not be painted over. Read more »
Hours after shooting up one of Banksy’s murals, unknown vandals struck again, firing shots at the millionaire street artist’s “Mild Mild West” piece in Bristol. Similar to yesterday’s attack on his “Windows Lovers” painting, blue paintballs were splattered across the work—earlier this year it was splashed with washable red paint by Appropriate Media. While a local politician was busy cleaning off the ‘Lovers’, the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft got to work cleaning the latest barrage.
Photo via BBC
Banksy fans continue making the pilgrimage to his big Bristol Museum exhibition, but not everyone is enamored with the semi-anonymous street artist. Last night, shots were fired at one of his local illegal paintings, “Window Lovers,” a naked man hanging out while a cuckolded husband and wife peer out the window. The blue paintball attack comes a little more than two months after a local group called Appropriate Media splashed Banksy’s “Mild Mild West” mural with washable red paint as some incomprehensible protest. While nobody has yet claimed responsibility for the latest attack, city officials plan to similarly restore the Banksy painting, a “tourist attraction” that draws “people from around the world.”
Photo via This is Bristol
Following this morning’s photo and video preview, here’s footage of “Banksy Versus Bristol Museum,” an enormous exhibit taking place in the elusive street artist’s hometown. Instead of an overexcited host explaining away the art, you get Banksy and his assistants smashing statues and putting the finishing touches on the show.
Tomorrow, the Bristol Museum opens without their regular artifacts. In their place: robotic cops, a burned out ice cream truck, Guantanamo prisoner effigies, animatronic animals and the sort of tongue-in-cheek pseudo-political paintings you’ve come to expect from millionaire street artist Banksy. Of the roughly 100 works on display in “Banksy versus Bristol Museum,” more than 70 of the pieces are brand new, while some others, like the portable toilets from Bog Henge and chicken nuggets from the Village PetStore & Charcoal Grill, are reworked. Pulling off the hometown show in secrecy meant keeping all but a few people in the dark, including Museum staff and city officials for who the show’s takeover is a surprise. The BBC helps break the silence with a video tour below as well as photos of the new exhibit. Read more »
An intrepid street art enthusiast ventured down to Bristol’s City Museum to confirm rumors it would be hosting Banksy’s summer show. Through a gap in the windows he snapped a shot of part of the elusive street artist’s 2007 portable toilet stonehenge, which helps explain the “2 Girls 1 Cup”-style ice cream cone on his website’s announcement. |Bristol Street Art|
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