Banksy news round-up

Published Oct 09 2008, 04:14 PM by Caitlin E. Curran

(Photo by Robert Stolarik for the New York Times.)

News about the famed, mysterious, prolific, trend-setting, point-making, globe-trotting street artist Banksy has been abundant in the past few months. In July, the Mail on Sunday published an annoyingly smug article, outing the artist as Robin Gunningham, "perhaps all too predictably, a former public schoolboy brought up in [the] middle-class suburbia" of Bristol, in the United Kingdom. (A middle-class public school kid created street art?! How dare he?) Their verdict relied mainly on this photo, of a man believed to be Banksy painting in Jamaica four years ago, and on interviews with friends of Robin Gunningham - none of whom actually came out and said the guy is Banksy. "Naturally, Banksy denied the picture was of him. Indeed, as we discovered, Banksy and those close to him tend to deny everything," the Mail complains. (Ha! Banksy: 1, Mail on Sunday: ...sort of also 1)

Unfazed by this attempt at cramping his style, Banksy went to New Orleans in August, around the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and planted a dozen or so pieces of artwork on the streets. The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com put together an excellent video of these works, and local reactions to them, watch it here. Unfortunately, one of Banksy's pieces has already been painted over entirely - apparently not all New Orleaners were psyched on a world-famous street artists coming to town.

Then, rumors swirled around New York City, after a very Banksy-like mural of a rat in a "I ♥ NY" t-shirt surfaced at Grand and Wooster Streets. "Has the elusive British graffiti artist Banksy struck New York again?" the Times wondered. (Maybe they should have consulted Vermin or Pest Control. According to Artnet News. "a controversial new organization, a group named Vermin, was established to authenticate Banksy’s Street Art works for the art market -- without the artist’s approval -- in competition with Pest Control, the authentication body headed by Holly Cushing and operating with Bansky’s okay." (Emphasis not mine.) Two groups are needed to authenticate his work? And one without his permission? It's no wonder Banksy flees from England so often. They can't seem to cut the guy a break.)

So! Today, the Phoenix's beloved music editor Michael Brodeur alerted me to the fact that, indeed, Banksy has struck New York again, and not just with the rat mural. The Times reports today:

"On Wednesday a Banksy piece was unveiled at 89 Seventh Avenue South (near Bleecker Street) in Greenwich Village.

This one is not a mural but an installation: a mock pet supply shop, filled with animatronic creatures like a rhesus monkey and would-be creatures like fish sticks swimming in a tank. The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill, as the green awning reads, is Banksy’s first official exhibition in New York, his representatives say, and it will be open to the public daily through Oct. 31."

Wooster Collective says: "A clear departure form last year's behemoth show in Los Angeles, Banksy's first ever show in New York City (the others have been fakes) is being held in a tiny storefront that's less than 300 square feet and can't hold more than 20 people at any one time.

One of our favorite things about what Banksy has done is that the entire show is completely visible to the public both day and night through the store front windows. And unless you're a hard core Banksy fan, or until someone like us tells you, it's absolutely impossible to know that the work has been done by Banksy. There are no paintings or graffiti in the entire space."

The Times, Gothamist, and Wooster Collective all have a bevy of photos from the installation posted on their respective sites but, Wooster Collective warns: "still images don't do the place justice!"

I say: time for a road trip to New York City?