on our way to the ferry to ireland driving across the south of england we had a few hours to kill. so we did the obvious thing; we stopped in bristol to go searching for an original banksy… or is that an original robert banks? i know, that’s a pretty lame thing to do and we are both very embarassed to behave like such groupies… there was a funny situation when we noticed another chap, camera strapped around his neck, doing the very same thing. it took us some time – btw. bristol is surprisingly graffiti-free considering it is hometown to the most famous graffiti artist worldwide. the banksy we finally did find, was the crap one; the one with the guilty lover hanging by his fingertips from a bedroom windowsill. that same day in the guardian we read, that bristol council has put this very piece under a preservation order. and how symbolic that is. this must be one of the very few non-political works banksy ever did. it’s got a tongue-in-cheek, slightly humerous message, one that is not threatening to the masses (mehrheitsfähig). but even more shocking to me, was how poorly it was done. it only works from far away, once you check it out from up close by it’s more like a mural than a graffiti piece, the technique utilised looks very clumsy.
i do wonder how banksy feels, that out of all his work the most harmless piece was the one placed under a preservation order… this might forever after become the bristol/banksy tourist trap. while for the rest of bristol they impose zero tolerance on graffiti and streetart.
or did we missunderstand and in fact the “banksy” was this arrangement of trash under his signature?
i still bought the book banksy wall and piece, but the cheaper, paperback version with the sticker on it that reads, “now with 10% more crap”.