Last blog question for semester one- Banksy's work

Banksy is a pseudonymous British graffiti artist. He is believed to be a native of Yate, South Gloucestershire, near Bristol and to have been born in 1974, but his identity is unknown. According to Tristan Manco,^[who?] 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." 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, 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. His art has appeared in cities around the world. Banksy's work was born out of the Bristol underground scene which involved collaborations between artists and musicians.

Banksy does not sell photos of street graffiti. 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 March5.

Banksy is legendary. In the UK, he’s pretty much a household name. Yet, mysteriously, very few people know who he really is. Those who do have done well through the years in keeping his name secret from the real public.

Much of Banksy’s work is humorous, and others have been known for subverting the media and popular icons. He’s had pieces of the Mona Lisa with a rocket launcher, crafted his own fake copies of Paris Hilton’s debut album, and made one of the UK’s most famous graffiti pieces — the one of two policemen kissing. Many of his projects have no doubt walked the line between the legal and the illegal, and some have clearly been illegal. Yet, no one has truly known who he was, and he has been safe from much scrutiny because of it.

But today the Daily Mail published an article that reveals who Banksy really is — or so they claim. It shows pictures of his work and house ‘he’ grew up in, reveals ‘his’ full name, and practically tells ‘his’ life story before he became Banksy. The article closes with a quote that Banksy by Banksy himself, saying to Swindle Magazine, “I have no interest in ever coming out. I figure there are enough self-opinionated a**holes trying to get their ugly little faces in front of you as it is.”

So why would the Daily Mail decide to share all this information and more (given that it is true)? It seems rather disrespectful.

If they aren’t correct, what about poor Robin Gunningham? Harassment incoming? People seem to be citing obituaries that detail a couple of deceased Robin Gunninghams… but that’s hardly worth anything, because who knows how many there are?

http://www.google.co.nz/imgres?imgurl=http://artandmusic.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/071208-

http://en.wikipedia.org/

'Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam'(2001)

Cyclo drivers, were conceded low in society, They have now become a simple artifact of the past. However, undeveloped areas in China still use the cyclo to this day, However they are now slowly vanishing in big city’s today. Cyclo was important for transportation in the past decades in China, this cheap means of transport has provided a source of income for many of those unemployed as a result of the country’s reunification in Vietnam. While in china, it is due to the disparate development. The focus on the realities about bottom people and the past is connected with the humanism and individualism, where human thinking and actions were considered the most important. In the work, the drivers finally escaped and run into the mosquito net, which is the symbol of the unknown future, thus the author explored the risk and survival of human in modern society with the rapid development and extensions. Besides, I prefer the work itself is more connected to the idea of sublime, because of the impressive underwater scenes.

The languid motion and tough development of the rickshaw-like device at the bottom of the sea is such a gripping symbol for an entire nation discovering its identity after a half-century of political turmoil. With direct reference to the impact of the Vietnam War on his country, Nguyen-Hatsushiba's beautiful camerawork deconstructs the fate of those who are caught between old and new modes of existence. As the divers strain to hold their breath long enough to propel their vehicles a few feet farther, additional tension is created between graceful movement and precarious mortality.

Zene Holloway’s breathtaking underwater photographs. unlike the pure beauty of those photos, Nguyen-Hatsushiba's underwater project is much more thought-provoking, making us think about the past, the current and the future of human and country, where the author’s intentions is well realized.

http://www.iberkshires.com/story.php?story_id=14312