Banksy

Banksy is a British graffiti artist whose true identity is unknown.

His artworks are often satirical pieces of art on topics such as politics, culture, and ethics. His street art, which combines graffiti writing with a distinctive stencilling technique, appears in cities worldwide. He turned to the art of stencilling after realising how much less time it took to complete a piece; he was always too slow and was either caught or could never finish the art in the one sitting. So he devised a series of intricate stencils to minimise time and overlapping of the colour.

Banksy's stencils feature striking and humorous images occasionally combined with slogans. The message is usually anti-war, anti-capitalist or anti-establishment. Subjects include rats, monkeys, policemen, soldiers, children, and the elderly.

After following a white paint trail around the streets of shoreditch it ends up at this stencil.

In late August 2008, marking the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Banksy produced a series of works in New Orleans, Louisiana, mostly on buildings derelict since the disaster.

In August 2005, Banksy, on a trip to the Palestinian territories, created nine images on Israel's highly controversial West Bank barrier. The wall stands three times the height of the Berlin Wall and will eventually run for over 700km—the distance from London to Zurich.

This piece is located on one of the main roads, leading out towards the Bethlehem checkpoint to Jerusalem. It is drawn on the side of a building, not on the Wall itself, largely for security reasons. The soldiers do not take kindly to professional entities spending a lot of time at one place on the Wall. Such people are generally arrested for terrorist activity and accused of trying to destroy, blow up, or weaken the structure.

This wall marks the spot where over 40 people were killed during the first Intafada (the little holes along the top are from bullets).
While Banksy was painting it a lot of people came over, some to shake his hand and others telling him to go away. Eventually the local MP was called out to diffuse the eighty-strong crowd that had built up (by which time Banksy had left and the piece was completed by the local kids.

www.banksy.co.uk/