"WHEN FASCISM COMES TO AMERICA IT WILL BE WRAPPED IN THE FLAG
AND CARRYING A CROSS." -SINCLAIR LEWIS

Monday, April 28, 2008

One Nation Under CCTV

Banksy does it again; from the graphic design blog katize:

Banksy has pulled off one of his most daring stunts to date - an enormous protest against Britain’s surveillance society painted just feet from a CCTV (Closed-circuit television) surveillance camera. Believed to be his biggest work yet in central London, the secretive graffiti artist managed to erect three storeys of scaffolding behind a security fence despite being watched by a CCTV camera.

The guerrilla artwork appeared on a wall above a Post Office yard off Oxford Street in central London on Monday morning. It features a boy in a red jacket painting the slogan “One Nation Under CCTV” in stark white capitals. His actions are filmed by a policeman next to a barking dog.

Frequently touching on political issues in his work, last month a Banksy-style painting depicting two children pledging allegiance to supermarket giant Tesco appeared on the wall of a north London pharmacy. It was interpreted as support for the growing campaign to ban free plastic bags.

For those not familiar with Banksy and his work, he is a well-known pseudo-anonymous English graffiti artist who's works are often satirical pieces of art that encompass topics such as politics, culture, and ethics; a subversive counter-culture commentator who doesn't sell photos of street graffiti or mount exhibitions of screen prints in commercial galleries. You can check out his official site here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love graffit artists with messages... not so much the guys who spray-paint their gang signs near our house. A guy I know from A&M has started his own vintage, thrift shop on Harvard Square called Proletariat. Check out his website, I think you'll appreciate some of his originally-designed tees. I know that John Malkovic does, since he's bought them before.

JBW said...

I actually like a lot of those designs; I didn't pick anything up this time as my funds are a little too tight right now to justify spending $30 on a t-shirt but I'm gonna check back later. Thanks