Some Art World News…

In July I went to the Bristol based street artist Banksy’s exhibition in London’s Covent Garden. It was quite a moment for me since I’ve longed to see his work in a context other than printed within a book. The gallery was full of his trademark stencil pieces spanning over a decade of his career. It was quite a sight. So when I woke up this morning heard that the council were going to support street art such as Banksy’s, safe to say it made me smile.

Bristol city council is planning to let the public vote before murals on buildings, walls and fences are scrubbed clean or painted over. If citizens decide they like it, the work will remain. The move will enhance their street art policy “to support the display of public art.”

The council will post pictures of  murals from around the city on their website, where residents can vote to decide if the piece should stay. Apart from being able to gauge what does look good in the area, it also hopes to weed out what doesn’t. The poll will help the council fight the war on tagging and help them to differentiate between the taggers and artists.

The move was made as a result of the “Banksy v Bristol Museum” exhibition attracted more than 300,000 visitors since June.  With queues of up to 6 hours long, it has made the council take notice of what the artist has done to enhance the city’s asthetics and its tourism.

So as street art is in it’s infancy of becoming more socially acceptable, will other councils have the same view? Let’s hope so…

Check out more info on Banksy here.

*By Gina, who is nursing a huge cup of tea and working on a new website.

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