After a hugely successful exhibition in the Bristol Museum, which had up to 4,000 people a day queuing to view it, and is estimated to have pulled £10 million into the city (Banksy at The Bristol Museum: This is a Queuing Opportunity), one would think that he may have taken time out and rested on his laurels for a while.

Not Banksy.

Straight back onto the streets again to anonymously leave his mark, or more aptly perhaps, his social remarks.

The picture above recently (September 09) appeared on a wall in Croyden, Surrey.

Anyone who has bought a self assembly kit will know the frustration felt by the “punk”, trying to assemble his “Large Graffiti Slogan” kit. As one commentator said, these instructions were designed to “make grown men cry”.

Why IEAK? It is my thought, that by reordering the letters into IEAK, the IKEA people are not getting any usable free advertising.

On its own it stands as a great piece of work, but what takes it from amusing to “LMAO”, is the story behind it.

Some bright spark at IKEA (Canada) came up with the idea that they could get some free advertising by commissioning a company to spray chalk paint, graffiti style, onto the walls of the buildings of local businesses.

“The stencil had a website address in it that directed the viewer to a website promoting discount mega super furniture chain Ikea. The stencil itself, however, had no Ikea logo, and no corporate identifiers other than it was sprayed in Ikea yellow.”

( The Vancouver Sun: Ikea graffiti aims to sink small businesses — and that sucks)

Although they later apologized to one complainant, they forgot the little known fact that even Banksy doesn’t put up graffiti on somebody’s wall without getting permission first. That’s the difference between graffiti art and vandalism. (Although I don’t know who gave him permission to “do” the Dividing Wall between Palestine and Israel!)

The picture is obviously a Banksy with his recognizable style and traits, as well as the obvious humour. The punk is very reminiscent of the one recently seen in the Bristol Museum Exhibition.

Or his earlier work of Lenin, with the same 6 spikes of hair.

The other workto appear this month, appeared on the corner of Tottenham Green Road and Philip Lane, London N15

It is a new variation of a previous studio work “No ball games” which first appeared in his “Barely Legal” exhibition in Los Angeles and again was on display in the Bristol Exhibition

I may be corrected, but I am unaware of this particular view of the boy before.

The girl appears to be, certainly if not a reverse stencil of the original, then possibly a reverse, recut from the original stencils.

The style of the ghost-like images can be seen in other of his street work such as the girl with the balloon.

Article source

After such a successful Summer show and with even his signed prints fetching thousands of pounds, why does he continue to go out onto the streets and risk losing his anonimity?

As I quoted him in a previous article:

“You could stick all my shit in Tate Modern and have an opening with Tony Blair and Kate Moss on Rollerblades handing out vol-au-vents, and it wouldn’t be as exciting as when you go out and you paint something big where you shouldn’t do.”

For more articles about Banksy by C. Jordan

http://thebanksyblog.blogspot.com/

or on Amazing Art by C. Jordan
The Amazing Epic 3D Street Art of Edgar Mueller  
The Amazing Hand Art of Guido Daniele
Amazing Art: The Dynamic Driftwood Horse Sculptures of Heather Jansch