Banksy Locations and Tours Volume 2

A Collection of Graffiti Locations and Photographs from around the UK

Banksy

• Publisher: PM Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781604863307
• eBook ISBN: 9781604866049
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

This unique and unashamedly DIY book follows the runaway success of Banksy Locations and Tours Vol.1 by rounding up the rest of Banksy's UK graffiti from the last five years. It includes over 100 different locations and 200 color photographs of Banksy's street art; information, random facts, and idle chit-chat on each location; a full walking tour of his remaining work in Bristol, England; and snippets of graffiti by several other artists.

Visit the locations in-person, or get your slippers on and settle back for an open-top bus ride though some of Banksy's best public work.

LONDON

Banksy Locations & Tours Vol 1 groups 65 Banksy graffiti locations (and a few by other artists and graffiti writers) into walking tours of three distinct areas of London.

I did not mean for this book to be dominated by London. I saw it primarily as a round-up of any other Banksy graffiti all around the UK and assumed it would be quite geographically balanced. But when I sat down and counted up the locations I was a bit shocked to realise that two-thirds of the locations are actually in London again. Oh well, c’est la vie, this is another annoyingly Londoncentric book then! The cold facts are that since Banksy left Bristol, circa 2000, a lot of his street pieces have been done in London and nearly every UK piece since 2005 had been done there until he started wandering a bit further in 2010.

Not surprisingly then London still has quite a few left to see, although time and local councils are now ravaging them.

At each ‘live’ location (i.e. ones still existing) I have given the nearest public transport link available; usually the local tube stations, but occasionally a train station or even a bus route.

LDN1

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?

This was part of the rabbit warren-style Marble Arch subway complex (Map/GPS reference: TQ 27748 80918). It was next to the toilets, which since renovation are no longer directly accessible by the subway.

This is featured in Banksy’s books Wall and Piece and Cut It Out, which date it to 2004, and also in the B Movie added extra that was part of the Exit Through the Gift Shop DVD release. The iconic stencil lasted over five years, despite being in such a high-profile place!

In an article in October 2008 about the possible removal of the ‘One Nation Under CCTV’ piece (see Location LDN7), the BBC reported that ‘What Are You Looking At?’ was not being removed as the whole area is being redeveloped. By spring 2009 work had started on the area, with the subways close to the graffiti being bricked up, and equipment appearing near the Banksy but never damaging it.

But sometime between November 2009 and June 2010 it was sandblasted away, and someone sarcastically added a comment underneath the already broken CCTV camera, asking, ‘Who Are You Looking at Now?’ (see inset photo right).

LDN2

THINK TANK

Postcode: SW1X 7PH

Map/GPS reference: TQ 27617 79716

Location & Details: Inside The Wellington Club at 116A Knightsbridge, on the corner of a small alley called Park Close.

A rather strange one, this. This work was described by the auctioneers Bonhams as “one of a number of studies” for the cover of Blur’s 2003 album Think Tank. It is done on distressed steel, measures 155 x 135cm and was called ‘Tank – Embracing Couple’ by Bonhams when they sold it for £62,400 at their Vision 21 auction in London on 25th October 2006. It is noticeably very, very similar to the finished album cover, with the only large difference being the single word ‘Tank’ on this. It’s presumably a piece done in the studio, as opposed to some related (and slightly later) works that were done on farm buildings in Yorkshire for the band’s photo shoot for the cover of the launch issue of the Observer Music Monthly magazine in September 2003. Two of these outdoor works were later sold at auction by Bonhams in April 2007.

Now it rather casually hangs on a wall in an ‘exclusive’ club in Knightsbridge, whatever that means. Look it up on the ‘net and you get the usual rubbish about Paris Hilton and Chelsea footballers -it’s where John Terry and Jody Morris were arrested in 2002. It does make it hard to visit.

Nearest tube: Knightsbridge (Piccadilly line)

Status

Fine apparently (July 2010), although it is surprising that it’s not protected. The photo shows it with a ‘Free Tibet’ sticker on it, which is surely irony given where it is now located and how much it cost at auction.

LDN3

SWISS EMBASSY CAR PARK

Postcode: W1H 2ET

Map/GPS reference: TQ 27708 81606

Location: Inside the Swiss Embassy, 16–18 Montagu Place, London, W1H 2BQ

In February 2008 a little-known secret about a nation often stereotyped as rather dull, secretive and overly conservative, suddenly got worldwide publicity. When the Swiss Embassy, in deepest central London, hosted the launch of Your Game, a charitable project run by the BBC and the Football Foundation to help young people who might be at risk of getting involved in gang culture, gun crime or substance abuse, few people knew that its underground car park contained the biggest and oldest collection of Banksy originals on walls anywhere in the world!

Photos and publicity from the launch showed a stunning array of work by Banksy and others, such as Chu, Snug and some Swiss graffiti writers. It dated back to 2001 when a project called Next Generation, designed to engage with the next generation of people and artists, ran various events through the year starting with a ‘Graffiti Party’ on 26th January. The artists were allowed free run in the car park and painted over two all-night sessions before the event. Banksy and Chu are no strangers, having painted together before and since this event, including at the infamous Walls on Fire event in Bristol in 1998. Chu also worked on Banksy’s earlier screenprints and they later collaborated on the crime scene style tape that said ‘Polite Line – Do Not Get Cross’.

Afterwards the Guardian reported that originally “the plan was to whitewash the walls but the embassy was pleased with the results and decided to keep the graffiti.”

There are many pieces in there that are obviously by Banksy: a multitude of spiky-haired Lenins (labelled ‘vulture capitalists’); a huge Mona Lisa with target, flames and a ‘Banksy’ tag (see photo right); monkeys with similar flames and targets; a security guard; ‘This Is Not a Photo Opportunity’; Mickey Mouse in flames; and a dreaming poodle, which has since been taken out of the garage and into the office.

Limited information is available on the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs website (www.eda.admin.ch/london), which includes the lovely quote that participation in sport helps “young people involved in or at risk of deviant social behaviour”. ‘Deviant’ is such an underused word these days I feel.

Status

All still fine apparently but unfortunately the Embassy doesn’t seem to understand the ethos of graffiti and refuses to let people visit it even with an appointment, security checks etc. Presumably they are happy to give the ‘youth’ a voice but then that voice will rapidly become the property of a posh Embassy. I’ve entered many embassies when I used to live in Ethiopia (and not long after a prolonged war), so I can’t believe that there are insurmountable problems in allowing at least limited access to it. Maybe the stereotype of the Swiss mentality is true after all?

Rant over.

Move along now; unfortunately there’s nothing to see here.

LDN4

Banksy Tags

We may never know if they are real or not, but two Banksy tags exist in the avant-garde arty venue of the old Horse Hospital near Russell Square (WC1N 1HX). The manager of the building told a friend that they had been done in about 2000 and that they had appeared at the same time as a couple of stencilled images outside. Well, I know for sure there was a lovely large riot copper next to The Friend at Hand pub on Herbrand St, so the story might actually be true.

POISON RAT

This was on the back of a bright red bus ticket machine on Hampstead Rd, very close to the large junction with Euston Rd (Euston Underpass). It was the best quality poison rat I had ever seen, although it didn’t have any toxic waste spilling from it. It had been there since at least mid-2006 but was painted over sometime in 2008, to send it to the pet cemetery.

LDN5

CND SOLDIERS & PETROLHEAD CANVASSES

For a few years these two large canvasses were part of Brian Haw’s peace and anti-sanctions camp in Parliament Square, London, after apparently being donated to the cause by Banksy. The CND Soldiers canvas was basically the same as the street version shown towards the front of the Cut It Out and Wall and Piece books, and also the print version sold via Pictures On Walls (POW). Peace advocates often poignantly placed little wooden crosses at the bottom of the canvas.

The other canvas was commonly known as Petrolhead, as it showed a man pointing a petrol pump at his head like a gun (it can briefly be seen in Cut It Out). The first one of these was apparently stolen and was replaced with the one in my photograph. A 10cm square sticker of it used to be available via POW with the ‘catalogue number’ BNK/5Y 027, a small canvas of it was on sale at Santa’s Ghetto in 2003, and the image also appeared twice at the Turf War exhibition in July 2003. In addition this image was stamped on a rare 12” white-label sam...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• “WE MAKE A LIVING BY WHAT WE GET, BUT WE MAKE A LIFE BY WHAT WE GIVE”
• THE GEEKY BIT
• BUY BYE BYE, SALE SELL SELL
• LONDON
• BRISTOL & THE WEST COUNTRY
• BRIGHTON & LIVERPOOL
• THANKS & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• CREDITS