Banksy on artofthestate

Plenty of new work and reworked work by Banksy has appeared in the massive Museum Of Contemporary Art (MOCA) ‘Art In The Streets’ show in L.A. His name wasn’t on the published list of artists but since last year its been pretty obvious he’d have work there and it looks like there’s plenty to see by him and a whole load of well known street artists.

Image from Daily Du Jour – click here for their set detailing Banksy’s work at MOCA

The title of this article is not a typo. For me from what I’ve seen so far this is art off the streets. It’s not fair to judge the whole show looking at a few pictures from the opening night from my seat on the other side of the pond so I’ll say no more at present than I feel a bit of the street art spirit has been lost with this show (but the graffiti history side of things looks very well documented….). When Banksy went ‘inside’ at the Bristol Museum it worked a treat, here it looks like a collection of pieces in a room. Great to see the canvas of the Poll Tax Riot piece along with confirmation that the Camden Canal goldfish work was his. Some nice revisits too – Single Lane Ahead and the church window being personal favourites.

Just adding some photos never published before to the Banksy archive over on the main artofthestate site. You can see all 16 additions by visiting this page and scrolling down a bit.

You watch from the sidelines as the qualification stages are negotiated, get through to the final selection and you think they’re in with a chance only to be defeated at the very last hurdle by what looked like to be the outsider. You have to watch from the sidelines as they celebrate and party on into the night.

Still, that’s enough about Arsenal’s defeat to Birmingham in the Carling Cup final yesterday – this is supposed to be a blog about Banksy.

Inside Job won the Best Documentary category at the Oscars last night beating Banksy’s Exit Through The Gift Shop and three other contenders. We’ll never get to know now just what would have happened if the award was won by Banksy. That, for me at least, would have been the really interesting bit. Congratulations to all involved for taking it this far.

A couple of updates on what’s going on with recent Banksy pieces in America.

B.Land managed to track down the Caution sign and get some great clear photos. Good job too as if its the same one I’ve seen elsewhere its since been tagged over and then cut out of the wall.

Karin has also checked in on the bulldog and found it now has company in the shape of a 24 hour security guard. Taggers and cutters might want to think twice about getting this one!

Good luck to ‘Exit…’ in the Oscars tonight….

Remember the Banksy ‘Choose Your Weapon’ print released by Pictures On Walls last December? Those lucky enough to have secured one might like to know that their money has successfully gained the release from jail of Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolaev from the Russian art group Voina. Bail was set at a frankly ridiculous 600,000 roubles with the authorities no doubt certain that two individuals alone were never going to raise that. What the court were probably unaware of was that the cash from the 400 CYW prints had winged its way to the pair and was promptly produced to release them from a pretty notorious St. Petersburg jail. Keep up to date on the story on picturesonwalls.com.

Elsewhere a big thanks to B. Land for allowing me to use his pictures of the most recent LA street pieces. He has loads more excellent quality shots on his Flickr stream of the elephant tank and Foreclosure pieces along with other LA area street art – go take a look here.

This Looks A Bit Like An Elephant: Photo: B. Land

Banksy Foreclosure: Photo B. Land

Well from here it certainly does look like a push to get the votes to secure the Oscar for Best Documentary (apparently voting closes later today) or at the very least a free ride on the attendant publicity machine. Three new pieces assumed to be in LA have recently turned up on his website. These are close up pictures but go take a look on banksy.co.uk to see the all important ‘in context’ shots. article continues below

Source: banksy.co.uk

‘This Looks A Bit Like An Elephant’ Source: banksy.co.uk

A riff on the families crossing highways signs in LA. Source: banksy.co.uk

Personally I think it would be great if the film won the Oscar. Granted, that’s a bit of a nonsensical position as I have no idea if it deserves one to be honest. Its the only one of the five I’ve seen. I do, however, think its a pretty cleverly executed caper. Most street art / graffiti films do the film a guy on the street putting up a piece of work at night with (if you’re lucky) a cop chase scene. All very exciting for the first 10 minutes but then many tend to get a bit repetitive. Exit Through The Gift Shop’s trick is to have a documentary that actually tells the story of this movement through some interesting characters. It’s the rise and rise (and possibly fall) of a decade of street art encapsulated in 86 minutes. It asks plenty of questions about how the art world operates, how hype and a queue can lead to adoration and quite why someone would chop a British Telecom phone box in half.

It’s all very easy to be dismissive of award ceremonies as exercises in back slapping product promotion. I’ve definitely been one of those dismissers in the past but I’d be lying if I found out I was up for an Oscar and said I wouldn’t be interested ( I would, of course, need to make a film first)! Banksy, as ever, puts it more succinctly: “I don’t agree with the concept of award ceremonies, but I’m prepared to make an exception for the ones I’m nominated for”

The Oscars are on Sunday night. Slightly more significantly Arsenal play Birmingham in the Carling Cup final earlier in the day.

Big thanks to Karin Freda for these context shots of two of the new Banksy pieces. For her trouble she now has the official title of ‘LA correspondent’ for this blog! For more pictures check Karin’s flickr stream.

Well it seems there’s a full on Banksy assault going on over Stateside. The pieces blogged earlier have appeared on banksy.co.uk with two more new ones. Go visit his site to see them full size:

A couple of new Banksy pieces have surfaced in L.A., photo of the Crayon boy (love the colouring crayon bullets) comes from Lauren Conrad’s twitter whilst Charlie Brown comes from the Wooster Collective.

Jamie Oliver has already been down to have a butchers – have a look at Lord Jim’s Flickr stream to see Essex’s finest pulling some poses alongside the Crayon boy piece. I like the fact that he gets roped in to taking a picture of someone else.

Well, yes it appears it can. First seen on Banksy’s website way back in September this bear was initially thought to be hiding out somewhere on the South Coast. So it’s pretty strange that it’s actually turned up in Lewisham, South London where it’s been living mostly undetected for the past few months. I say mostly because a simple search on Flickr for “bear Lewisham” reveals it had actually already been found way back in July but not recognised as a Banksy, see here and scroll down a bit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/moleculeman/4153235837/