Banksy Embraced In Multi-Million Pound Office Development

ONE man’s anti-social graffiti is another’s high art. Just ask self-styled ‘guerrilla artist’ or ‘urban node’, or whatever he calls himself, Banksy.

While talented kids around the country have ASBO’s slapped on them for tagging a wall, the much-celebrated and very wealthy artist du jour is positively encouraged to spray his pseudo-art-jizz all over the country.

Now, even property developers are jumping on the Banksy bandwagon with a major new office and shop development in Bristol incorporating one of his murals rather than destroying it.

The piece entitled The Mild Mild West features a teddy bear about to hurl a petrol bomb at riot police in a really really really clever and ‘subversive’ statement on, erm, the inherent violence in the stuffed toy community.

Gavin Carpenter, of Connolly and Callaghan, which owns the building in Stokes Croft, says: “I think people assumed the worst when they heard about the development. They thought the mural would go. But Banksy is very much the man of the moment and this will bring some kudos to the development.”

And money, of course.

Gary Hopkins of the city council is equally supportive of the artist. Says he: “Where there is good quality street art, other graffiti does not tend to encroach. That’s why we commission various murals around the city.”

But how do you judge whether it is ‘good quality street art’ or graffiti? Maybe it goes something like this – poor black kids make graffiti while rich white men make good quality street art.

Anorak

Posted: 6th, June 2007 | In: Money Comments (3) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink