Who the Heck is Banksy?

The well known street artist who goes under the moniker of Banksy is both popular as well as totally unidentified to the world.

Rumours on a regular basis swirl on the street art forums about Banksy’s actual identification and where he’s from.

I assume it’s probably secure to assume that Banksy is from, or a minimum of a local of, Bristol. Bristol is a tool sized city in the south west of England, where, much of Banksy’s very early job has shown up on the city’s roads, neighboring Bath and also he likewise held his major exhibition Dismaland in Weston-Super-Mare.

Now a street painter and social commenting graffiti artist with a global online reputation, Banksy has in some way managed to maintain his identification mainly secret, although there are lots of followers in agreement over a couple of names of that he is most likely to be.

Active from 1990, he is claimed to have actually been influenced by the graffiti artist 3D (also known as Robert del Naja), who is also a member of the group Massive Attack. There have been consistent rumours that Robert del Naja is in fact Banksy, however there isn’t much proof to sustain this theory besides touring dates which occasionally match up with brand-new jobs by Banksy.

Gorillaz artist Jamie Hewlett is additionally rumoured to be Banksy, however the majority of find this concept also less most likely.

Banksy has frequently been presumed to be young man named Robin Gunningham who grew up near to Bristol and after that in the mid 1990s moved to London.

The timings of his life in Bristol and London would certainly also match fairly very closely with new activity in both cities.

Drum as well as Bass celebrity Goldie also described Banksy as ‘Rob’ in a meeting when which provides additional credence to the suggestion that Gunnigham is behind the strange musician.

School buddies of Gunningham have validated that he went under the name of Robin Banks during his very early graffiti tasks, as well as like a lot of college time nicknames, it’s simple to see exactly how Robin Banks might have wound up as Banksy over time.

The initial well-known mural by Banksy remained in 1997 and labelled the Mild West, featuring a teddy bear tossing a bomb at police officers. It’s widely thought to have actually been painted over long ago.

Nowadays, Banksy’s works are commonly viewed as instant millionaire condition, with homeowner quick to board up or install protective perspex coverings over the operate in efforts to protect them.

Several of those who have been lucky sufficient to get a nighttime check out from the elusive Banksy have had the art work properly eliminated in order to market it to collection agencies. However, taggers or ‘competing’ street musicians sometimes get to the artwork initially in order to ruin it or render it pointless by putting paint over it or spraying their very own tag over the top, which is quite discouraging for everybody that is interested in it. I’m pretty certain it does not create any type of additional direct exposure for the completing artist, as well as I most definitely would not be including myself to their Instagram followers!

On the subject of money, Banksy’s net worth is thought to be about $55 million.

Banksy’s identification was thought to have actually been revealed during a journey to Melbourne when a young woman walking down some laneways caught a graffiti artist spray painting a brand-new work.

As she approached she saw his traditional stencil trademark and also tried to catch hime.Nobody seems to sure whether it was him or not.

Banksy has repainted several famous pieces in Melbourne, consisting of the world famous Little Diver piece that features on a Blur album cover near the police station on Flinders Lane. However this artwork was damaged with a tin of paint in 2008, not long after it was photographed by popular Melbourne photographers.

To maintain his anonymity and perfect lifestyle which enables him to do what he wants while still earning the big bucks, he offers extremely few meetings, although in one chat with Simon Hattenstone with The Guardian around 2003, he is described as being “scruffy informal”, which is the uniform you expect for a graffiti artist.

In the 2010 documentary film Exit Via The Gift Shop, Banksy is interviewed, although we don’t see anything of his face. This can likewise have been some smart misdirection on the behalf of the director, as there has actually been alot of discussion over the reality that Banksy might really be a cumulative group of musicians and artists instead of a single person. Perhaps talking to a skinny white man in his 30s, with shadows over their face making them tantamount and a masked voice gave the viewer what they expected to see rather than revealing anything new or offering any kind of fresh hints as to the truth. Maybe it was simply another possibility for Banksy to throw us off the scent as well as maintain us guessing?

Although Banksy’s works have shown up all over the world, including Melbourne, it appears that London is probably his main address from the information we can gather with brand-new pieces of street art typically discovered in the southern part of the UK.

With graffiti being greatly prohibited in most places, it’s reasonable why Banksy may intend to conceal his real name and continue to be anonymous, but we’d still love to know exactly who he really is.