Hundreds of people on Saturday lined up outside a shop in southwestern England to buy Banksy-designed T-shirts created to help four defendants charged over the toppling of a statue of a slave merchant.
The statue of 17th-century slave merchant Edward Colston was hauled down and thrown into the waters at Bristol harbor during a Black Lives Matter protest in June of last year.
Four of the anti-racism demonstrators have since been charged with causing criminal damage and will face trial next week.
Slave trader Colston’s statue was hauled down by anti-racism demonstrators in June 2020
Beer money
Elusive street artist Banksy said on Instagram he wanted to help the accused by raising funds from the T-shirts so the quartet “can go for a pint.”
The T-shirts cost £25 ($33, €29) and are limited to one per person.
Banksy’s identity remains a closely guarded secret. He began his career spray-painting walls and bridges in Bristol. Since then, many of his works have sold for millions of dollars at auction.
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
Out of the bin
A partially shredded canvas of one of Banksy’s most celebrated works could sell for millions at Sotheby’s in October 2021. “Love is in the Bin,” formerly called “Girl With Balloon,” has an estimated selling price of $6 to 8 million (€5 to 7 million). After the sale of the original canvas in 2018, the painting began to self-destruct in a shredder hidden in its frame moments after bidding ended.
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
‘All in the same boat’
This artwork appeared on a wall in Nicholas Everitt Park, in Lowestoft, England, on August 7. While it was quickly believed to be a new work by Banksy, the elusive street artist confirmed a week later through an Instagram post that he was responsible for it, along with a series of new works in different English seaside coastal towns, which he dubbed “A Great British Spraycation.”
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
The Louise Michel, a rescue boat for refugees
Banksy has funded a boat to rescue refugees trying to cross from North Africa to Europe. The Louise Michel, named after a 19th-century French feminist anarchist, is covered with pink paint and the street artist’s graffiti. According to “The Guardian,” 89 people were rescued in one day in 2020. Since the beginning of 2020, at least 500 migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean Sea.
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
A statement on systemic racism
A vigil candle sets fire to the US flag: Banksy revealed in June 2020 on Instagram a painting commenting on George Floyd’s killing and honoring the Black Lives Matter movement. “People of color are being failed by the system. The white system,” the artist wrote. “This is a white problem. And if white people don’t fix it, someone will have to come upstairs and kick the door in,” he added.
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
The superheroes of the coronavirus pandemic
Spiderman and Batman are yesterday’s superheroes: This little boy prefers to play with a nurse wearing a face mask and a cape. With this picture revealed at the beginning of May 2020, Banksy paid tribute to the outstanding contribution of doctors, nurses and hospital workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
Ready for takeoff?
In December 2019, Banksy posted a video showing his mural of reindeer taking off — but instead of Santa’s sleigh in tow, it’s a man lying on a bench, to draw attention to the plight of the homeless. “God bless Birmingham,” the artist wrote. “In the 20 minutes we filmed Ryan on this bench, passersby gave him a hot drink, two chocolate bars and a lighter — without him ever asking for anything.”
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
‘Devolved Parliament’ — Made in Britain
The elusive street artist created in 2009 “Devolved Parliament,” featuring chimps instead of politicians in the British Parliament. Amid the chaos caused by Brexit, the work embodies the country’s political atmosphere. The 2.8 x 4.5-meter (around 9 x 15-foot) painting was auctioned off in London in October 2019 for 9.8 million pounds (around €11 million).
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
On show rather than at auction
The millions of pounds that “Devolved Parliament” reaped in October also sparked criticism, with no information about the buyer provided. Likewise in October, Banksy installed artwork in a closed shop in London as a commentary, saying that artworks at auction had become the property of the rich rather being the common property of people at large.
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
The World of Banksy
Banksy is one of the most famous street artists in the world, yet his true identity remains under wraps. Paintings or drawings on paper are rare creations of his. Instead, the British artist sprays most of his works anonymously on buildings, walls and demolition ruins. Such street art is not for sale.
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
Steve Jobs
A recurring theme in his works is the predatory nature of global capitalism. Banksy sprayed this mural in the entrance area of the refugee camp in Calais, France. Depicted is the late Apple founder Steve Jobs, carrying his legendary first Mac computer. The father of Jobs hailed from Syria.
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
A statement about Brexit
Banksy addressed the Brexit debate in the UK with this work back in 2017. Overnight, this picture appeared on the wall of a house not far from the ferry port in Dover ferry port: It shows a man standing on a ladder trying to remove one of the EU stars with a hammer and chisel. The image has meanwhile disappeared from the wall, with someone having whitewashed it.
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The British street artist has also addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2017, Banksy opened The Walled Off Hotel, an actual hotel featuring his artworks, in Bethlehem right next to the controversial Israeli West Bank barrier. The artist has also left quite a few of his artworks throughout this historic town since 2005, drawing many tourists on a “Banksy Tour.”
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
War is not a child’s game
One known fact about Banksy’s identity is that the world-famous artist comes from Bristol in southern England. He moved on to London at the end of the 1990s and began to spray his pictorial messages onto the walls of selected locations. Here, he was back in Bristol in 2016, leaving behind a mural at a English primary school in Whitchurch.
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
Global climate crisis
As an artist, Banksy has always been a visionary. In his wall works, he has often addressed the political problems of the future, such as global warming, as shown here. He created this sprayed message in London in 2009.
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Banksy’s ‘Love is in the bin’ goes under hammer
Criticism of the media
Banksy has also denounced the brutalization of the media, which jumps onto the bandwagon of sensationalism with regard to war and terrorist attack victims. This is depicted in this work entitled “Media at war,” which, like some of his other works, has not been sprayed onto a building wall, making it possible to exhibit it in a gallery, such as here in London in 2018.
Author: Heike Mund, Louisa Schaefer
Statue placed in a musem
Colston, whose statue was erected some 175 years after his death, made his fortune transporting enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas.
After it was hauled into the harbor, Bristol authorities fished the statue out, saying it will be placed in a museum, along with placards from the Black Lives Matter demonstration.
The statue of slave trader Edward Colston was displayed at the M Shed museum in Bristol
jsi/fb (AP, dpa)
UK: Banksy T-shirts for statue-toppling defendants go on sale
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