Banksy, Banksy Who?

Melbourne is full of enchanting stencils and street art done by talented artists. Many of them are anonymous and some I believe are very inspired by Banksy. His work is very controversial, somewhat political, yet entertaining and beautiful. Street art has always been a silent voice, advocating for the public. They sometimes plant an idea in the head of an unsuspecting pedestrian.  

Banksy (born 1974 in Bristol) is a well-known pseudo-anonymous English graffiti artist. He is believed to be a native of Yate, Gloucestershire, near Bristol and to have been born in 1974, but there is substantial public uncertainty about his identity and personal and biographical details. According to Tristan Manco, Banksy "was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier engineer, 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 or mount exhibitions of screenprints in commercial galleries. 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. There are websites floating around that claim are from Banksy or Banksy supported, but who knows.

Banksy's "The Flower Chucker" is included in the feature film The Age of Stupid to represent all modern art stored in an archive after the end of the world as we know it.