TIME OUT LONDON has just released a “collectors item” issue featuring a cover story BANKSY interview with matching poster to boot (order HERE). Have a read:

AN INTERVIEW WITH BANKSY
By Ossian Ward | Time Out London, Mon Mar 1 2010

Reclusive street artist, Banksy, comes out of the shadows to tell Time Out about his notoriety, ongoing graffiti wars and increasing the value of London property. But not to plug his new film.

Many people claim to have done so, but I have indeed met – albeit accidentally – the real Banksy, an unremarkable, medium-build man wearing glasses, at an East End graffiti jam a few years ago. However, direct access to him is strictly limited nowadays. Banksy nevertheless agreed to an exclusive interview to settle some scores and to create a brand new piece of work for Time Out’s cover, in which he revisits some of his classic pieces featuring royal Foot Guards variously pissing or spraying graffiti on walls. After lots of waiting and furtive messaging, the trail having gone cold many times, he responded to our questions from his bomb-proof bunker. But like Kirk Douglas, I had to make sure that this really was Spartacus first…

Is this definitely you? After all, some hacks have been duped into unofficial interviews with imposters, naming no names (the Guardian Guide)…
I wish you were talking to an imposter. I don’t have much of a personality, so it’s difficult to “be” one. Also I want to talk up the film, but I don’t want to talk about it – I’m worried I might ruin the ending. Can we just run a blank page that people can draw on?

Can you at least say why you’ve dubbed this the first ever street-art ‘disaster movie’? Does that mean it’s your last film?
I consider this whole experience to be a disaster on many levels. I think it will be known as my first movie, the one that didn’t lead to a career in filmmaking.

First came the art, then your move into animatronics, then a feature film… does that make you the next Walt Disney?
I’d never thought about it like that. I guess opening a giant theme park for vandals would be next. I was at a holiday camp when ìLicense to Illî by the Beastie Boys came out. Practically every kid had a VW badge hanging around their necks that they’d stolen off a car in town. I remember the police raided the camp and the mayor came and gave us a stern lecture by the paddling pool.

Now that your mugshot has appeared in the paper, do you get recognised on the street?
I know a couple of years ago a bloke claimed he was Banksy to get into a nightclub in Shoreditch and when word went around he got a kicking off some other graffiti writers. It’s in my interest not to comment on any of the photos doing the rounds.

What’s this battle with Robbo and Drax all about, then?
I didn’t deliberately start a battle with Robbo – have you seen the size of him? In the ’90s him and Drax were infamous enough that we’d even heard about them in Bristol. The truth is I didn’t paint over a piece that said “Robbo”, I painted over a piece that said “nrkjfgrekuh”. But either way, I don’t buy into the idea a wall “belongs” to a certain writer, or anyone else for that matter.

Traditional graffiti writers have a bunch of rules they like to stick to, and good luck to them, but I didn’t become a graffiti artist so I could have somebody else tell me what to do. If you’re the type who gets sentimental about people scribbling over your stuff, I suggest graffiti is probably not the right hobby for you.

You are accused by the graffiti community of selling them out? How do you plead?
It’s hard to know what “selling outî means – these days you can make more money producing a run of anti-McDonald’s posters than you can make designing actual posters for McDonald’s.

I tell myself I use art to promote dissent, but maybe I am just using dissent to promote my art. I plead not guilty to selling out. But I plead it from a bigger house than I used to live in.” Click HERE to continue reading at Time Out London…

Have a look at the Paris project in detail HERE…

BANKSY IN “THE WORLD’S FIRST STREET-ART DISASTER MOVIE”
By Elanor Mills | SUNDAY TIMES, February 28, 2010
He’s the most successful graffitist ever, the elusive outsider who has become our unlikeliest national treasure. Now we are about to glimpse him in ‘the world’s first street-art disaster movie’

Whether it is snogging policemen, a House of Commons full of chimpanzees, Princess Diana on a £10 note, or I Don’t Believe in Global Warming half-submerged in a canal, a Banksy makes you smile, but it also forces you to take a second look, to think a little deeper.
It’s funny how this anonymous graffiti artist evokes such strong affection in people, particularly those who don’t usually reckon that art has much to say to them.

“Banksy, love ’im,” says a mate who wouldn’t be seen dead at Tate Modern. Another friend, who met him at a crusty travellers’ party in Bristol, says: “He’s very quiet, sweet though, very Bristol, scruffy and funny, but you’d never know if you didn’t know, if you know what I mean.”

So why does everyone have a favourite Banksy? Perhaps because he catches us unawares, shows us a clever take on our culture from a topsy-turvy angle on a scruffy bit of wall, or bridge, or hoarding we’ve looked at a million times but never noticed before.

My commute takes me through Shoreditch and Hoxton in east London, and I’ve learnt where to look for them. Recently he has been painting in Camden Town, north London, where he has had a running spat with a fellow graffiti artist called Robbo. On a freezing day I went down to have a peek. Past the lock, along a grotty towpath in the snow, under a most insalubrious bridge, and there on a bit of concrete on the far side of the muddy canal is a stencil of a workman painting a wall. The workman was added by Banksy to the original Robbo tag. Since then, a vengeful Robbo has revisited the work to daub “King Robbo” in giant silver letters over it.

Back towards Regent’s Park there is a charming stencil of a little boy fishing in the canal, which now bears the aggressive slogan “Did you think it was over? Team Robbo”, and the words “street cred” where the fish should be, implying that Banksy has lost his. Click HERE to continue reading at the SUNDAY TIMES…

BANKSY’s subterranean screenings of his new documentary, “Exit Through The Gift Shop” in a makeshift pop-up theater in an unused subway tube beneath London’s Waterloo Station kicked off this week to queues of rabid fans. Miraculously, the UK bomber managed to keep news of the screenings and his dank setup totally secret until last week’s surprise announcement when screenings (twice daily until March 4th) instantly sold out via online sales. The theater features copious amounts of street art inside and out and functions as much as an impromptu Banksy art show as a movie theater. Ironically—or perhaps, appropriately—enough, patrons were forbidden to bring any spray paint or other graffiti marking tools into the screening. Of course, Mr Banks was a no-show (or was he?), but his melted ice cream truck concession stand proved a hit across the board. Have a look at the setup: Read the rest of this entry »

NASTY NECK FACE is back in town and Hollywood swingin’ over at BARRACUDA…

The NEW YORK TIMES has just run a great piece on ST bro CRASH and his retrospective show, “Crash: From the 4 Train to Fenders” on view at FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY through February 28 (don’t miss it!):

TIPS FROM A MAESTRO OF THE SPRAY CAN
By Jan Ellel Spiegel | NYTimes, February 18, 2010

JASMINE JOHNSON is sprawled on the floor of the Thomas J. Walsh Gallery at Fairfield University here, her red high-tops in the air as she intently sketches on a two-foot-square sky blue canvas.

Nathaniel Jefferson is on a nearby bench, equally intent as he mulls the possibilities of a green canvas. Israel Medina, who goes by Tony, is outside in the cold, energetically spraying paint to transform a pink canvas propped against a tree.

“The wheels are turning,” says the artist John Matos, surveying the work.

These three art students from Bridgeport high schools will be joined by two schoolmates the following day as they work on a project designed by Mr. Matos, who goes by the name Crash (as a student he crashed his high school’s computer).

A child of South Bronx housing projects, Mr. Matos was younger than these teenagers when he began honing his art in the 1970s by breaking into a subway yard at night and spray painting the cars for hours in the dark and cold. Click HERE to continue reading at NYTimes…

Friday was a big nite in the Midwest when SHEPARD FAIREY’s Ohio installment of his traveling retrospective “Supply & Demand” opened at the CINCINNATI CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER and shattered the institution’s all-time attendance record. Turning out in droves, fans streamed in from throughout the region to get a glimpse of over 250 pieces of Fairey’s artwork from all stages in his career, from the outset of the Andre the Giant campaign up to Obama’s Hope poster artwork, along with some new, site-specific paste-ups (and seven new street-legal murals throughout town). Ol Shep capped off the night (only a week after his 40th birthday) with a hardcore Serrato session that made the locals feel like they were in LA for one nite (or at least a couple hours anyway). HAVE A LOOK: Read the rest of this entry »