Banksy

Banksy is an anonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist and film director of unverified identity. Their satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. Banksy's works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world. Banksy's work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. Banksy says that they were inspired by 3D, a graffiti artist who later became a founding member of the English musical group Massive Attack.

Banksy displays their art on publicly visible surfaces such as walls and self-built physical prop pieces. Banksy does not sell photographs or reproductions of their street graffiti, but art auctioneers have been known to attempt to sell the street art on location and leave the problem of its removal in the hands of the winning bidder. Banksy's first film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, billed as "the world's first street art disaster movie", made its debut at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The film was released in the UK on 5 March 2010. In January 2011, Banksy was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film. In 2014, Banksy was awarded Person of the Year at the 2014 Webby Awards.

Banksy started as a freehand graffiti artist in 1990–1994 as one of Bristol's DryBreadZ Crew (DBZ), with two other artists known as Kato and Tes. Banksy was inspired by local artists and their work was part of the larger Bristol underground scene with Nick Walker, Inkie and 3D. During this time Banksy met Bristol photographer Steve Lazarides, who began selling Banksy's work, later becoming their agent. By 2000 Banksy had turned to the art of stencilling after realising how much less time it took to complete a work. Banksy claims they changed to stencilling while hiding from the police under a rubbish lorry, when they noticed the stencilled serial number and by employing this technique, they soon became more widely noticed for their art around Bristol and London. Bansky was the goalkeeper for the Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls football team in the 1990s, and toured with the club to Mexico in 2001. Banksy's first known large wall mural was The Mild Mild West painted in 1997 to cover advertising of a former solicitors' office on Stokes Croft in Bristol. It depicts a teddy bear lobbing a Molotov cocktail at three riot police.

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