AO1 Artists and Designers

Banksy
Subjects, themes and issues.-According to author and graphic designer Tristan Manco, Banksy "was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. He became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s.
-Banksy is an anonymous British graffiti artist, political activist, and painter. His pieces combine a dark humour with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique. Such artistic works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world.
-He first started tagging in small areas some of his art work and after some attention realised he had and audience and potential he moved to London to gain a larger and more variety of an audience and more surface to tag on.
Movements and styles.
Banksy is mostly known for his unique and individual style of graffiti mainly based on and relates to a variety of political views and situations, and other world issues, which are put on walls and buildings which can be humorous, artistic and insulting.
Context of work.
Banksy can give a piece of art a different feel some of his pictures show stereotypes and famous images with a twist and in a graffiti style, for example a picture of to police men kissing at a lamppost and a terrorist throwing a bouquet of flowers.
Other pieces tackle serious political issues and give them a humorous or insulting nature for example he does a lot of pictures involving police and war and adding elements to give it a meaning and criticizing the way things are
Materials and processes. -Stencils are traditionally hand drawn or printed onto sheets of acetate or card, before being cut out by hand.
-He uses computers for some images due to the photocopy nature of much of his work.
-He mentions in his book, Wall and Piece, that as he was starting to do graffiti, he was always too slow and was either caught or could never finish the art in the one sitting. So he devised a series of intricate stencils to minimize time and overlapping of the colour.
-In the writing and word parts of his work The font that banksy uses is well known one called "STOP" The font is an upper case Sans Serif font.

Events and trends.
Most of Banksy’s work is influenced by political issues
He has also shown the world graffiti at its best and uses it to convey feelings people have about the world.








The rarely seen internationally famous street artist Banksy has completed murals in a disused railway tunnel near Waterloo Station in London, UK. One is a large image of a knife wielding hoodie with a small QR Code which decodes to Banksy’s entry in Wikipedia.











How I can use this artists work.
I like the colour and materials he uses, and the way Banksy’s work is presented using an unusual surface. The way he illustrates his characters in almost block colours would make it good to use for an animation.