Banksy is an anonymous English graffiti artist , political activist , film director and painter. His satirical street art and subversive epigramscombine irreverent dark humour with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique. Such artistic works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world.Banksy's work was born out of the Bristol underground scene which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. According to author and graphic designer Tristan Manco, Banksy "was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier technician, he trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s." Observers have noted that his style is similar to Blek le Rat , who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris and members of the anarcho - punk band Crass who maintained a graffiti stencil campaign on the London Tube System in the late 1970s and early 1980s and is active today.Known for his contempt for the government in labelling graffiti as vandalism, Banksy displays his art on public surfaces such as walls and even going as far as to build physical prop pieces. Banksy does not sell photos of street graffiti directly himself; however, art auctioneers have been known to attempt to sell his street art on location and leave the problem of its removal in the hands of the winning bidder.Banksy's first film, Exit Through the Gift Shop , billed as "the world's first street art disaster movie", made its debut at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival .The film was released in the UK on 5 March 2010.In January 2011, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film.

Career

Banksy began as a freehand graffiti artist 1992–1994 as one of Bristol's DryBreadZ Crew (DBZ), with Kato and Tes. He was inspired by local artists and his work was part of the larger Bristol underground scene . From the start he used stencils as elements of his freehand pieces, too.By 2000 he had turned to the art of stencilling after realising how much less time it took to complete a piece. He claims he changed to stencilling whilst he was hiding from the police under a rubbish lorry, when he noticed the stencilled serial number and by employing this technique, he soon became more widely noticed for his art around Bristol and London.

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

Banksy's works have dealt with an array of political and social themes, including anti - War, anti - capitalism , anti - fascism , anti - imperialism , anti - authoritarianism , anarchism, nihilism, andexistentialism. Additionally, the components of the human condition that his works commonly critique are greed, poverty, hypocrisy, boredom, despair, absurdity, and alienation. Although Banksy's works usually rely on visual imagery and iconography to put forth his message, he has made several politically related comments in his various books. In summarising his list of "people who should be shot", he listed "Fascist thugs, religious fundamentalists, (and) people who write lists telling you who should be shot." While facetiously describing his political nature, Banksy declared that "Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world, I can’t even finish my second apple pie."

£10 notes to Barely Legal (2004–2006)In August 2004, Banksy produced a quantity of spoof British £10 notes substituting the picture of the Queen's head with Diana , Princess of Wales ' s head and changing the text "Bank of England" to "Banksy of England."

ccccccccIn August 2005, Banksy, on a trip to the Palestinian territories, created nine images on the Israeli West Bank wall :

Exhibitions

Banksy held an exhibition called Barely Legal, billed as a "three day vandalised warehouse extravaganza" in Los Angeles, on the weekend of 16 September, 2006. The exhibition featured a live "elephant in a room ", painted in a pink and gold floral wallpaper pattern, which, according to leaflets handed out at the exhibition, was intended to draw attention to the issue of world poverty. Although the Animal Services Department had issued a permit for the elephant, after complaints from animal rights activists, the elephant appeared unpainted on the final day. Its owners rejected claims of mistreatment and said that the elephant had done "many, many movies. She's used to makeup".

His first official exhibition in New York, the "Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill," opened 5 October 2008. The animatronic pets in the store window include a mother hen watching over her baby Chicken McNuggets as they peck at a barbecue sauce packet, and a rabbitfgwf putting makeup on in a mirror.

For once, banksy's art was celebrated and not berated by a museum. in fact, banksy said, "this is the first show i've ever done where taxpayers' money is being used to hang my pictures up rather than scrape them off." pretty funny considering that bristol-raised bansky was once sought out for vandalism by his hometown police.

Techniqueasked about his technique , Banksy said :

“ I use whatever it takes . Sometimes that just means drawing a moustache on a girl ' s face on some billboard , sometimes that means sweating for days over an intricate drawing . Efficiency is the key . [

”Stencils are traditionally hand drawn or printed onto sheets of acetate or card, before being cut out by hand. Because of the secretive nature of Banksy's work and identity, it is uncertain what techniques he uses to generate the images in his stencils, though it is assumed he uses computers for some images due to the photocopy nature of much of his work.He mentions in his book, Wall and Piece, that as he was starting to do graffiti, 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 minimize time and overlapping of the colour.