Graffiti: art or vandalism?

Where do you expect to see graffiti? Probably not in a museum. Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, in the south-west of England, was the kind of place you went to see classical statues and stuffed animals in cases until the arrival of the ‘Banksy versus the Bristol Museum’ exhibition in the summer of 2009. The exhibition hosted more than a hundred works by Banksy, one of the world’s most famous graffiti artists. Since then, Banksy has become even more famous, with projects such as Dismaland, the Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem and the self-shredding artwork Love is in the Bin, but the 2009 Bristol exhibition is still remembered as an important moment when street art entered a traditional museum.

Banksy is a man of mystery. He hardly ever gives interviews and likes to be anonymous. Nobody knows much about his life or his background, but many people believe that his real name is either Robin Gunningham, Robert Banks or Robin Banks and that he was born in the early 1970s in the Bristol area.

Banksy’s street art is often controversial, and his murals have appeared on streets and buildings in cities across Europe, the Middle East and the United States. And he’s even spray-painted live sheep and cows! Banksy’s work now sells for huge sums of money. In 2021, his famous shredded artwork Love is in the Bin sold for more than £18 million. Banksy designed an album cover for the British band Blur in 2003, but he has refused at least four requests to do adverts for Nike. A year after the Bristol exhibition, Banksy made a film called Exit Through the Gift Shop. The film tells the story of a French street artist in America. Exit Through the Gift Shop received many positive reviews. Nobody knows if it was about a real artist or an invented character from Banksy’s imagination.

Bristol isn’t the only place in Britain to welcome graffiti. DPM Park in Dundee, Scotland, has one of the UK’s best-known legal graffiti walls. It is almost 110m long. Anyone can paint on the council-owned wall any time they like. Local artists and organisers use the wall to show the positive side of graffiti and to support creative projects in the community.

Is everyone allowed to do graffiti? Can people do graffiti anywhere they want these days? Not exactly. It’s illegal to paint on somebody else’s property, so make sure you find a legal graffiti wall like the one in Dundee if you want to have a go.