If you have a statue in the city centre you could go past it every day on your way to school and never even notice it, right. But as soon as someone puts a traffic cone on its head, you’ve made your own sculpture.
BANKSYIf you have a statue in the city centre you could go past it every day on your way to school and never even notice it, right. But as soon as someone puts a traffic cone on its head, you’ve made your own sculpture.
BANKSYI’ve never really understood why people sleep. Wasting a third of your life and becoming vulnerable for almost 8 hours every night. Doesn’t seem very appealing to me.
BANKSYSome people represent authority without ever possessing any of their own.
BANKSYI used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don’t do that so much anymore.
BANKSYI 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.
BANKSYBut there’s no way round it-commercial success is a mark of failure for a graffiti artist. We’re not supposed to be embraced in that way. When you look at how society rewards so many of the wrong people, it’s hard not to view financial reimbursement as a badge of self-serving mediocrity.
BANKSYGraffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing.
BANKSYThe one thing you can rely on is if you get disturbed halfway through a painting and it looks a bit naff, then someone will preserve that piece, remove it and a few months later it’ll be paraded round Sotheby’s by people wearing white gloves.
BANKSYI love the way capitalism finds a place – even for its enemies.
BANKSYNot everyone will understand your journey. That’s okay. You’re here to live your life, not to make everyone understand.
BANKSYPeople who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine.
BANKSYFight the fighters, not their wars.
BANKSYThere’s nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place.
BANKSYIf you feel dirty, insignificant or unloved, then rats are a good role model. They exist without permission, they have no respect for the hierarchy of society, and they have sex 50 times a day.
BANKSYI like to think I have the guts to stand up anonymously in a western democracy and call for things no-one else believes in – like peace and justice and freedom.
BANKSYGraffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three types of people; politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers.
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