Banksy

Banksy at the Moco Museum, Barcelona.

British street artist Banksy is one of the most iconic figures in contemporary art, yet his identity remains anonymous. Emerging from the 1990s Bristol underground scene, he develooped a stencil technique to create works both visually direct and conceptually charged. Through satire, irony and dark humour, his work exposes pressing social and political issues. 

Recurring motifs such as children, police and animals, allow Banksy to question systems of authority and mechanisms of control. Whether painted on city walls, found objects, or altered paintings, his interventions subvert familiar contexts and challenge viewer's assumptions.

Over the past decades, street art has entered mainstream cultural discourse, in part due to Banksy's influence, redefining ideas about where art belongs and whom it addresses. His works invite audiences to reconsider dominant narrative, proving how disruption can serve as a spark for reflection and change.

The title of the exhibition was Icons Reimagined  because: ' A visual dialogue across time takes shape. Banksy draws on the legacy of Modern Masters Andy Warhol, Keigh Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, transforming their iconic imagery into instruments of social critique. He brings together generations of street and pop art, showing how creativity can challenge authority and give voice to those often overlooked. By reinterpreting the Modern Master's strategies of exposure, humour and irony, Banksy develops his own visual language while honoring their lessons, revealing how their insights continue to resonate with contemporary challenges'.

Girl with Balloon (Gold), 2004, (screenprint)

Girl with Baloon (Pink), 2004, (screeprint on paper)

Banksy's Girl with Balloon is one of his most iconic works and a defining image of 21-st century art. Celebrated for its simple yet powerful message, it depicts a young girl reaching towards a heart-shaped balloon. Over time, Banksy has created multiple versions of this motif, sometimes altering the balloon's colour or adding subtle variations that invite viewers to reflect on its meaning in new ways.

Originally created in 2002, the piece no longer exists in its original form, yet its impact continues to resonate worldwide. Voted Britain's favourite artwork, the image was created in 2015 to commemorate the Syrian conflict, preserving its limitless message of hope and innocence. In 2018, a framed print partially shredded itself immediately after being sold at auction, turning the moment into a performative critique of the art market and reflection on art's fleeting value.

Flower Thrower, 2003

When Flower Thrower, also known as Love is in the Air, first appeared on the West Bank Wall in Jerusalem in 2003, it was revolutionary. The work has appeared internationally in cities with divisive histories, such as Berlin, proving to be a universal symbol with a rallying call to humanity worldwide.

In this triptych version the protestor is fragmented across three panels. The edition marks Banksy's first experiment spraying a stencil onto film and exposing it directly through screenprint. The process, both physical and imperfect, recalls the origins of pop and street art while rejecting the precision of digital reproduction.

At first glance, a figure poised to launch what we expect to be a Molotov cocktail seems to continue the cycle of violence. Instead Banksy replaces the expected weapon with a bouquet of flowers. Blossoms burst from a clenched fist to convey a message of peace and hope. With sympathy and satire, Flower Thrower suggests coflict resolution is rooted in love.

Love is in the Air, 2003 

Choose Your Weapon (Gold) VIP, 2010, (screenprint)

A hooded figure grips a leash that holds back a barking, cartoon-like dog. Both the masked figure, part protester, part everyman, and his graphic companion mirror Britain's disaffected youth culture, often portrayed as dangerous or lost. First appearing in London in 2010, the work captures Banksy's dialogue with American artist Keith Haring, whose famous Barking Dog motif became a global emblem of protest and a voice of the streets in New York. By reimagining Haring's icon, Banksy connects two generations of artists who replaced violence with creativity, their tools not swords but spray can. What we hold in our hands, a weapon, a leash or a brush, may decide the kind of world we build.

Basquiat, 2019, (print and hand finished)

A dialogue across time unfolds: a Ferris wheel spins, its carriages replaced by Jean-Michel Basquiat's iconic three-point crowns, symbols of artistic power, ambition and Black pride. Rendered in white lines, resembling chalk on a black surface, the image also recalls Keith Haring's subway drawings: spontaneous, public and alive. Banksy brings together the legacies of Basquiat and Haring, reviving the raw immediacy of 1980s street art while positioning himself within a lineage that transformed the city into a canvas and art into a collective experience.

First released through Gross Domestic Product, Banksy's satirical 'brand' store that blurred the boundaries between art and commerce, the work reveals how easily rebellion can be absorbed by the systems it challenges. Here, Banksy questions whether street art can remain subversive once its imagery, and even its spirit of defiance, are consumed by the marketplace.

Madonna and Child,

A quiet act of care turns uneasy. A veiled mother nurses her child, yet rust bleeds through her breast beneath the infant's worried gaze. The corrosion becomes part of the wound. What should be tender now disturbs.

Banksy first shared the image on his social media, without title or context, a silence that amplified both mystery and emotion. Rooted in centuries of Madonna-and-Child imagery, the scene echoes Renaissance devotion, yet belongs to the present: a time of conflict, loss and hope. As in his earlier works, Banksy turns maternal imagery into a mirror of modern life's contradictions, while the material itself speaks of decay.

Whether read as a commentary on the West Bank, where Palestinian motherhood persists against impossible odds, or as a timeless reflection on suffering and indifference, the work resists simplicity. Banksy never confirms, leaving the iamge open and drawing us into uncertain space where the divine fades into the human.

Grim Reaper AP (on silver), 2005, (screenprint)

A skeletal figure of Death sits casually atop a large clock, scythe in hand, its face replaced by a bright yellow smiley. The cheerful mask, borrowed from 1990s rave and acid house culture, contrasts with the Grim Reaper's deadly purpose, turning a symbol of fear through a playful twist.

First appearing on the streets of East London, the scene's clock, resembling Big Ben, reads five minutes to midnight. This refers to the Doomsday Clock, a metaphor for how close humanity stands to global catastrophe. Through this dance between humour and mortality, Banksy invites us to reflect on our desensitisation to danger and the absurdity of modern life. If the clock were truly ticking towards the end, would we still be smiling?

Stop Sign, 2023-2024, (hand painted resin on screenprinted stop metal sign)

A bold, red stop-sign, ordinarily meant to regulate traffic, becomes a battlefield. Its surface beats three resin-cast drones, hand-painted and glued by Banksy onto a metal traffic panel. This guerilla installation was removed form Peckham street in South London, less than an hour after the artist confirmed its authenticity through social media.

For nearly two decades, Banksy has turned his gaze towards the genocide in Gaza. From his 2005 murals on the West Bank barrier to later works in occupied territories, he has consistently addressed the dynamics of power, surveillance and civilian suffering. Here, the drones that once symbolised control are repurposed as instrument of protest, transforming the stop signal into a call to end war.

FR(AGILE), 2022, (screenprint)

A white rat claws at a freight box stamped Fragile. With each desperate scratch, the first letters fall away, revealing a new word: Agile. In this small act of defiance, Banksy transforms a sign of weakness into a gesture of resilience.

The rat, one of Banksy's most recurrent motifs, stands for those who adapt in hostile environments. Released in 2022 as part of a fundraising campaign for civilians affected by the war in Ukraine, this linited edition combines purpose and care. Each rat's marks are unique, scratched by Banksy himself using a sharpened pizza cutter, a handmade act that mirrors the resourcefulness of those it supports. 

Both message and method affirm Banksy's belief in art as action. In times of conflict, agility may become the most radical form of hope.

Bullet Hole Bust, 2006, (cast jesmonite)

Banksy writes a new ending to the classic David vs Goliath. In the Bible, David defeats the giant Goliath with a slingshot to the forehead. 

Here, we're hit with a modern twist and see evidence of a gunshot wound in the perfectly polished marble bust. Is Banksy declaring that classical art is dead?

Happy Choppers, 2024, (acrylic, oil and spray paint on modified oil painting)

A squadron of military helicopters cuts through a severe, pastoral landscape, turning a peaceful scene into a machinery war invasion. Yet one detail disrupts the threat: a bright decorative yellow bow tied to the lead aircraft, transforming a symbol of conflict into one of contradiction. The ribbon, absurdly tender and almost childlike, softens the violence it crowns, exposing the uneasy coexistence of innocence and destrudtion.

Part of Banksy's Corrupted Oil series, the work merges street iconography onto found oil paintings sourced from thrift shops and flea markets. The result is a reflection on the human cost of armed conflict, particularly the impact on civilians and children, the most vulnerable victims of war.

What happens when the past is rewritten in the language of the present? Banksy's altered oil paintings, often called Crude Oils, Vandalised Oils, or Corrupted Oils, challenge the authority of the Western art tradition. The secondhand landscapes he uses are discarded scenes of calm, nostalgia and cultural prestige. Onto their surfaces, he inserts modern imagery and contemporary conflict. The result is an act of discuption. Quiet symbols become loud questions. They remind us that history, like art, is never neutral. Even a peaceful scene can carry the weight of power.

First appearing at Whitecross Street Market in London in 2002, the motif has become one of Banksy's most recognisable, embodying his ongoing call for freedom, peace and justice. Both satirical and defiant, Happy Choppers brings together delicacy and brutality, encouraging us to question what kind of violence we have come to accept as normal.

Goldfish Bowl, 2019, (PU resin, acrylic, glass eyes and printed canvas mounted on plywood in painted artist frame)

A goldfish leaps towards freedom, and lands in artifice. Banksy presents a tragicomic scene of absurd bravery, exposing our faith in false horizons: a resin fish frozen mid-flight between its plastic town and a painted sea that can never be reached.

Created for Gross Domestic Product, Banksy's pop-up 'store', Goldfish Bowl transforms a domestic ornament into a sharp reflection on modern existence. Every element deceives: the frame imitates age, and the seascape is a printed fiction, revealing how easily reality is packaged, polished and sold back to us.

Here, the goldfish becomes a mirror of the human condition: aspiring to freedom while trapped within systems that sell us the illusion of it. Whether we pursue consumer dreams, digital escapes, or political ideals, Banksy asks: what if the ocean we long for is only another bowl?

This is not a Photo Opportunity, 2009, (oil on board)

Smiling Copper (Panel B), 2002, (spray paint and acrylic emulsion on drywall)

The life-size riot policeman stands before you like a barrier. His intention is masked by smiley face emoji.  As protectors of peace, what could it be hiding?

Banksy's life was changed forever, after the unnecessary killing of two men who stole a police motorcycle, otherwise known as the 1992 Hartcliffe Riot. It's a tragedy that still brings grief and anger to the city of Bristol. Ever since the anonymous street artist witnessed this unjust powerplay, he has given a voice to the underdog.

Laugh Now, (Panel B), 2002, (spray paint and emulsion on door)

This work points to the spirit of street art - working on any and every possible surface with quick speed. A monkey wears a sandwich board that reads: Laugh now but one day we'll be in charge. The provocative text, both mocking and threatening, forewarns us of an imminent revolution.

Pulp Fiction, 2004, (screenprint)

Bomb Love, 2003, (screenprint on paper)

A young girl hugs a military bomb as if it were a toy, her eyes closed and her smile in sharp contrast to the weapon she affectionately holds. Banksy creates a visual contradiction between innocence and the threat of conflict, exposing how modern society has come to normalise war and aggression. The child's tender embrace suggests that love, not cruelty, could disarm the world's machinery of violence.

First released in 2003 through Pictures on Walls, a London-based publisher that supported many of Banksy's early print editions, Bomb Love was produced in both signed and unsigned formats. It has since become one of the artist's most recognised works.

Through playful yet unsettling imagery, Banksy invites viewers to confront their own desensitisation towards violence and to rediscover humanity's capacity for empathy and compassion, even when surrounded by instruments of destruction.

Di-Faced Tenners, 2004, (screenprint on paper)

CCTV, 1998, (spray paint on canvas)

The average Londoner is captured on CCTV more than 300 times a day. Police use CCTV for almost everything, from traffic observation to neighbourhood watches, you are being watched.

Surrealism Beyond Borders

Surrealism Beyond Borders

at Tate Modern.

There are images commonly associated with Surrealism, a revolutionary cultural movement that prioritised the unconscious and dreams, over the familiar and everyday. Sparked in Paris around 1924, Surrealism has inspired and united artists ever since. This exhibition traces its wide, interconnected impact. It moves away from a Paris-centred viewpoint to shed light on Surrealism's significane around the world from the 1920s to the 1970s. It includes artists who embraced this spirit of revolt and those who shared Surrealist ideas and values but never joined a group. It features some who are intersected with Surrealism at various points - working in parallel, associated loosely or for a short period, or counted in by other Surrealists.

Surrealism is a shifting term, but at its core, it is an interrogation of political and social systems, conventions and dominant ideologies. Inherently dynamic, it has travelled from place to place and time to time - and continues to do so today. Its scope has always been transnational, spreading beyond national borders and defying nationalist definitions, while also addressing specific and local contexts. In a world defined by territorial control - and the consequential ideological constraint, expansionist conflict, and exploitative colonialism - Surrealism has demanded liberation and served artists as a tool in the struggle for political, social and personal freedoms. 

Revolution is a central idea for Surrealism, as it offers the possibility for transformation and liberation. Since its conception, Surrealism has challenged predominant systems of power and privilege, division and exclusion, and has been emboldened by a growing chorus of voices. Alongside the cultural and sociopolitical forces that etermined its own evolving history over the last century, Surrealism has presented a model for political engagement and agitation for artists, many of whom have been arrested for 'subversive' behavious.

While Surrealists have expressed revolutionary ideas in poetic and artistic terms, some have also generated collective actions. They have condemned imperialism, racism, authoritarianism, fascism, capitalism, greed, militarism and other forms of power and control. From student, civil rights and anti-war protests, to the decolonisation movement, Surrealism has served as a tool but not a formula.

In the months before the outbreak of WWII, with European nationalism on the rise, Surrealists in Cairo for instance, came together to form a vocal resistance. The group issued a manifesto in 1938 written by Georges Heneim, Long Live Degenerate Art, which references the Nazis' denunciation of modernist art as 'degenerate' and in conflict with their fascist ideology. Strongly critical of conservatism and the ongoing colonial British presence in Egypt, they aligned themselves with 'revolutionary, independent' art liberated from state interference, traditional values and dominant ideologies. In this they responded to ideas articulated in the 1938 manifesto Towards a Revolutionary Art, drafted by Andre Breton and Leon Trotsky at the Mexico City, home of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. It called for an international front in defence of atistic freedom. 

In Mexico City, as in other locations, taking up Surrealism meant grappling with the dual forces of internationalism and nationalism. Mexican Muralism and Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco's grand narrative murals had taken on an official government role since the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). During the 1930s, however, many artists distanced themselves from muralism and, along with Frida Kahlo, forged connections with Surrealism. With its open-door policy, Mexico was a welcoming home to those fleeing totalitarian Europe. Including the political revolutionary Leon Trotsky, the circles around Kahlo and Rivera were internationalist, and it was through their encouragement that many Surrealists arrived in Mexico City. A core community of Surrealist artists who came together in Mexico City were women. In the particular case of Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington, their friendship involved the study of Mexico's indigenous cultures and archaeological sites. Influenced by occult and alchemical sources, these artists also infused Surrealism with fejinism, magic and natural forces.

The artworks assembled here reveal some, but certainly not all, of the many routes into and through Surrealism. It challenges conventional accounts that centre Surrealism in Europe, presenting an interrelated network of activity - one that makes visible many lives, locations and encounters linked through the freedom and possibility offered by Surrealism.

Marcel Jean, (France), 1941, Surrealist Wardrobe, (oil paint on wood panel)

Jean's Surrealist work imagines a portal to freedom, his vision projected on the closed doors of a wardrobe.

Dorothea Tanning, (USA), Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music), 1943, (oil paint on canvas)

This has always been my favourite Surrealist painting. A girl and lifelike doll share the landing and staircase of a hotel with a giant sunflower. Their tattered clothes and the state of the oversized plant suggest the aftermath of a nightmarish struggle. The unknown threat may have been resisted, although the powerful force drawing the girl's hair up appears very active.

Salvador Dali, (Spain), Telephone-Homard, (Telephone Lobster), 1938, (steel, plaster, rubber, resin and paper)

Uniting a working Bakelite telephone with a plaster lobster, Dali made a modern communication device dysfunctional and dangerous, yet playful. The lobster's tail, where its sexual organs are located, is placed directly over the phone's mouthpiece.

Joyce Mansour, (France), Untitled (Object Mechant), Untitled (Nasty Object), 1965-60, (assorte scrapts of metal)

Mansour published her first book of poems in Cairo in 1953. She was 25. Her work caught the attention of the Paris Surrealists and she became central to the group after settling there in 1956. Inspired by Surrealism's unbounded approach to self-expression, that could lead to many different outputs, she produced artworks like this object mechant, a sponge ball into which she pushed nails and bits of metal.

Marcel Duchamp, (France), Why Not Sneeze Rose Selavy? 1921, (wood, metal marble, cuttlefish bone, thermometer and glass)

Duchamp, who participated in Surrealism as a curator and organiser, also showed in Surrealist exhibitions. Duchamp identified this as an 'assisted readymade', as it combines found elements (such as the cage) with his subtle interventions; in this case playing on the visual similarity between sugar cubes and marble blocks.

Pablo Picasso, (Spain), Composition au Gant, (Composition with Glove), 1930, (cardboard, plaster, wood and sand)

Ikeda Tatsuo, (Japan), Kijuu-ki Bangai: Masuku Dori (Birds and Beasts Chronicle, an Extra Edition, Mask Bird), 1958, (pen, conte and watercolour on paper)

Ikeda turned to art as a way to bear witness to Japan's military defeat during WWII, the Allied Occupation of Japan and nuclear atrocities. Following his art education in Tokyo, he joined a loose collective of artists led by Taro Okamoto. They rejected both abstraction and social realism (art depicting working class experience) as inadequate modes for representing the realities of the post-war period. 

Max Ernst, (Germany, France), Deux Enfants sont Menaces par un Rossignol, (Two Children are Threatned by a Nightingale), 1924, (oil paint with painted wood elements and cut-and-pasted printed paper on wood)

With a combination of painted and sculpted elements, and a poetic title, Ernst achieved a dreamlike atmosphere. By tapping into unconscious imagery, this work suggests a strange and anxious narrative. Aligning closely with Surrealist practice, it was soon recognised as a pivotal work.

Surrealism has questioned - and sometimes attempted to overthrow - the strongholds of consciousness and control. Dreams are critical to this end because, like hallucinations and delusions, many have believed that they can reveal the workings of the unconscious mind. In some works featured in this exhibition, fantastical juxtapositions or nighmarish subjects capture the sense of the ordinary made unfamiliar. Surrealist artists in various locations have seized this potential for liberation. They seek the inspiration of dreams to break from limitations imposed by societal customs, or to bring the self, community or work of art beyond the reach of waking reality.

Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams provided an early, vital stimulus for many artists' approaches to Surrealism. Max Ernst's painting, for example, draws upon such an experience: a 'fever vision' in which he saw forms appear in the graining of wood panelling.

Rita Kernn-Larsen, (Denmark), Phantoms, 1934, (oil paint on cardboard)

Kernn-Larsen's exploration of unexpected imagery extended, at times, to a contrast of stylistic modes within a single composition. Phantoms was triggered by the shock of witnessing a drowning at sea, and the image evokes the haunting figures of the victims.

Tarsila do Armaral, (Brazil), Cicada (La Rua), (City) (The Street), 1929, (oil paint on canvas)

Tarsila (as she is known) explained that this painting recorded 'a dream that demanded expression' in Paris.

Yves Tanguy, (France), Milles Fois, 1933

The threatening atmosphere of this painting may reflect the bleak economic and political climate of Europe in the 1930s.

Erna Rosenstein, (Remburg, Austria-Hungary [present day Lviv, Ukraine]), Screens, 2004

Rosenstein travelled from Krakow to Paris in 1938 and saw the Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme. It had a major impact on her work, although she later rejected affiliation with the movement. A survivor of the Holocaust, she processed her traumatic experience through the lens of Surrealism as a catharctic release. Screens features the disembodied heads of her murdered parents. 'The screen for projecting thought', she once said, 'has been there for a long time, it is painting'.

Mayo (Antoine Malliarakis), (Egypt, France), Baton Blows, 1937, (oil on canvas)

A close look at this jumble of pastel-coloured forms reveals social tumult, political extremism and violence. Mayo had already made connections with the Paris Surrealists in the 1920s. This work dates from his period in Cairo where he exhibited with the group al-Fann wa-I-Hurriya, (Art and Liberty). As the title suggests, this work records one of the frequent confrontations of the period between police and people (including students and labour unions) protesting the treatment of people experiencing poverty and the lingering influence of colonial Britain, despite Egypt's official independence.

Joan Miro, (Spain), May 68, 1968, (acrylic and oil on canvas)

Miro made this painting during the final years of Franco's dictatorship in Spain. Its title and date demonstrate the artist's support for the student uprisings of 1968, during which protesters spray-painted Surrealist slogans on the walls of the Sorbonne in Paris. Within this energetic composition that mimics graffiti, the artist added his handprints, connecting himself to their cause. Involved in Surrealism since the early 1920s, Miro later recalled the 'sense of drama and expectation in equal measure [in] that unforgettable rebellion of youth'.

Pablo Picasso, Les Trois Dansenses, 1975, (oil on canvas)

Cossette Zeno, (Dominican Republic), No Use to Talk about the Little Wig, 1952, (oil on canvas board)

This Surrealist portrait wryly mocks male vanity, with its witty title and references to hair in the painting. Zeno countered the conservative teachings of the Universidad de Puerto Rico with a series of humorous compositions with feminist messages.

Rene Magritte, (Belgium), Time Transfixed, 1938, (oil on canvas)

Magritte focused on 'elective' affinities' - obscure associations he perceived between objects. He explained: 'I decided to paint the image of a locomotive. In order for its mystery to be evoked, another immediately familiar image without mystery - the image of a dining room fireplace - was joined'.

Claude Cahun, (France), Self-Portrait, 1954

Lee Miller, (USA)

Lee Miller, (USA), Portrait of Space

In Portrait of Space, Miller Captures the desert landscape from behind a damaged fly screen. She contrasts interior and exterior spaces in one frame, reflecting the Surrealist's interest in pushing beyond the conscious mind to focus on the unconscious and dreams. 

Lee Miller, (USA)

Maria Izquierdo, (Mexico), Squash with Pan de Muerto), 1947

Izquierdo joined a tight community of women Surrealists who convened in Mexico during WWII. Her still life assembles foods associated with the Day of the Dead: green squash used to make calabaza candles and sugar-coated bread.

Leonora Carrington, (UK, Mexico), Self-Portrait, 1937-38, (oil on canvas)

Carrington's Self-Portrait draws on her interest in alchemy, the tarot and Celtic folklore. Here she is sitting with a rocking horse on a hyena, while the horse galloping outside represents the Celtic goddess of fertility and freedom. This self-portrait also reflects her response to gender stereotypes. Looking back, Carrington commented about her role in Surrealism, 'I didn't have time to be anyone's muse'.