Banksy speaks! The ever elusive road artist, whose identification is all the time the topic of feverish hypothesis, supposedly pops up on an extended misplaced interview posted right this moment on the BBC web site as a part of The Banksy Story collection. The artist was interviewed by the previous arts correspondent Nigel Wrench in the summertime of 2003 to mark the opening of Banksy’s fabled Turf Battle present in east London. The individual interviewed, talking in a gentle West nation burr, was a “younger bloke in a hoodie”, says Wrench.
Wrench’s chat with the nameless artist is intriguing; the reporter factors out to Banksy that among the works within the exhibition—together with painted animals comparable to a cow daubed with Andy Warhol’s face—are anarchist statements. “It’s not a lot anarchy…. Who has the precise to evaluate anyone else?” the artist says. And does he wish to put politics again into artwork? “I don’t take into account myself to be that political…I’ve even had policemen prior to now say they sort of like issues about it.” Requested about mega collector Charles Saatchi hoovering up his works in the meantime, Banksy retorts: “I’d by no means knowingly promote something to Charles Saatchi.”
The interviewee talks particularly about his quirky method to creating graffiti works. “In the identical approach my mom used to cook dinner Sunday roast each Sunday and says each Sunday, ‘it takes hours to make it, minutes to eat’. Today she eats microwave meals for one and appears rather a lot happier. I am sort of taking that method to artwork actually. I wish to get it completed and dusted,” says “Banksy”. Crucially, Wrench asks him if he’s known as “Robert Banks”; the artist replies: “It’s Robbie.” The masks has slipped it appears (just a bit bit).
