Film Friday- Banksy

Banksy- Exit Through the Gift Shop

Banksy is inspired by the world. He takes current political, economical and cultural issues and presents them in a satirical form with his unique art work. He challenges normality by pointing out the things wrong with humanity and he disorts our vision of how we perceive the world to show us the problems that are right in front of us, almost giving us new eyes to view the world from.

In my opinion Banksy is exceptionally unique, from hidden identity to his artwork he has formed a message that can't be recreated. Although during the documentary Banksy talks about Andy Warhol and how he "made a statement by repeating famous icons until they became meaningless" and I think that there is an element of that which Banksy channels, he has repeated his graffiti style work illegally hundreds of times until now when they have become respected as artwork, the word illegal is now meaningless when discussing Banksy. Banksy visually communicates this by being an oxymoron, The whole idea of street art is to brainwash, place something in front of someone enough times and their brain will be washed with the image and message that is repeatedly around them. Banksy is repetitive in his signature graffiti style for that reason of brainwashing and his work all has a common message of taking current issues and altering our perception but he also is the opposite to that, he is individually exclusive, he dares to confront different issues and different mediums such as sculpture and living things such as the 'Elephant in the Room' at his art exhibition in Los Angeles.

Banksy is a mainstream artist, he's extremely popular as one of the main modern day artists of the now generation. He's cutting edge with his topical messages that he presents us with, such as gay rights with his work 'Kissing Coppers',  terrorism with his Disneyland Guantanamo Bay display and Slavery with his impactful work of 'Bunting Boy'. He steps out of the box and created something that only he could think of, Banksy's 'Kissing Coppers' which he created as a "symbol of local pride" is innovative and powerful, shocking and meaningful all at the same time. 

During filming for Exit Through the Gift Shop we see Banksy place a figure dressed in prison uniform in Disneyland, this work was to "highlight the plight of terror suspects" in Guantanamo Bay. This is a clear representation of how Banksy chooses to challenge establishments such as law enforcement. 

He also goes for more broad subjects like in his exhibition in America 'Barely Legal' he camouflaged an elephant with 12 liters of children's face paint in a statement of how easy it is to ignore things that are right in front of us. 

This is almost a summary of the reason why Banksy's other work important, his art has the ability to show us the things that are right in front of us, he makes it in such a way that people are incapsulated by the issues that are important in today's world.

Megan Chilcott