"Melbourne's Banksy blunder mocked overseas"

General Pub
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Melbourne’s Banksy blunder mocked overseas

London tabloids have widely ridiculed the “blundering Australian bureaucrats” behind the accidental removal of a Melbourne mural by British artist Banksy.

UK newspapers The Telegraph, the The Times and the Daily Mail all ran prominent stories on the disappearance of the priceless graffiti, which was painted over by street cleaners earlier this week.

The Daily Mail blasted Melbourne bureaucrats for their “cock-up”.

“The street art used to show an image of a purple rat falling in a parachute and was displayed on the wall of an old council building on Hosier Lane,” it said.

“But two days ago the wall was ‘improved’ by a thick layer of ‘battleship grey’ paint by an anti-grafitti squad ‘cleaning’ up the city streets.”

Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle today tried to soften the anger surrounding the incident by saying he would be happy to consider commissioning Banksy art in the future.

The backlash has continued back in Australia with one prominent local stencil artist calling the bungle a big shock.

“While street art is all about being ephemeral - being there one day and gone the next - at the end of the day it’s Banksy’s work so it’s a huge loss to the city,” said New Zealand-born artist Regan ‘Ha-Ha’ Tamanui.

Tamanui, whose Sydney laneway tribute to AFL bad boy Ben Cousins featured on ninemsn in late 2007, said Hosier Lane was the “street art Mecca of Melbourne” and should be the last place councils would be cleaning.

The removal was also mocked on US pop culture bible Death+Taxes.

“Though the District Council have admitted to their stupidity, they have passed the buck to the anti-graffiti team; saying that the ‘cleaners’ did not know the significance of the work, and promptly removed it because of the surrounding tags.” it wrote.

“However, did they ask locals what they thought about their blanket white-washing plans?”

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/img/2010/national/2804_banksy_sp_lg.jpg

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To be honest, there is much better ‘street art’ in Melbourne than the banksy that was removed.
Its not a good thing though. I’d love to be in a city that embraces art as much as Berlin, but alas with anti-graffiti groups, this will never happen.

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Agreed, there is much better around than banksy’s overly commercialised and quite unoriginal works.

Not saying he was never original, I just find his style to be getting a bit tiresome/overdone nowadays, and the messaged conveyed are always pretty obvious and broad statements.

However, if it was a herakut or ma’claim photorealism piece, then i would be pissed.

After all its street art, you pretty much understand that anything you paint on a wall is going to be painted over. You deal with it, I’m sure banksy doesn’t really give two hoots, and plus he gets into the media again. Win win for him really.

4

not this bullshit on here too. fuck me. if he’d wanted it kept in perpetuity he would’ve painted it on 4-inch thick stainless steel and sealed it in an airless booth. who fucking cares.
come and cry over the many banksies that still adorn the walls of Prahran.
how many cunts cried when they removed that neckface devil when the shop it was on got turned into a nando’s?
who complained when they jailed 70K or vosco?

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fucking owned!

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Man that shit was real Jams!

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pffft street art, go over to the old collingwood tech and stare at Keith Harings masterpiece. Then come back and see if you still think one banksy is worth sooking over.

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speaking of which, there’s a community forum about that Haring mural on thursday night, with artists, historians, conservators etc. its on the yarra council website if yer interested

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did anyone see the self appointed street art custodian on the news?

typical “Yartz” wanker.

same dudes that love “pretty” street art in “edgy, grungy” alleys but would howl like a toddler with a skinned knee if the wall outside their converted workers cottage in clifton hill got a stencil or tag on it…

dude, it’s street art.

shit ain’t meant to last…

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Hell yeah! A like minded individual.

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Banksy has been around for Fu(kn years…Its only in the last 5 years or so that ‘Street art’ has been put into the spotlight as ‘cool’… + the fact i think it was Brad Pitt purchased a piece of wall in england for hundreds of thousands that really highlighted the ‘graff’ culture…
There are so many copy cats of banksy hence why the tiresome/overdone factor has come into it…
Banksy was the 1st to convey his stye of art…

The Melb city council can eat 1 big dick,praps maybe 2…
It was them that put out a massive ‘clean the streets’ program right b4 the Commonwealth games that wiped out 30+ years of Graff culture that was known world wide as 1 of the top cities in the world for Graff…
That has now changed… Sad shit…
But now all of a sudden ‘Graff’ has become of monetary value the council is all about it…

My 2c…

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…dble post

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Look up Blek le Rat, he was around before Banksy and that’s apparently why Banksy uses a lot of rat imagery (I’m not sure about this though.

The whole paint over this piece sucks, but putting putting a piece of glass over is stupid. Either way i’d bet money that Banksy is somewhere having a good chuckle.

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The best thing is that London are being critical. I’m sure they weren’t critical of their own clean up teams back in Banksy’s early days.

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fuck em, London has been painting over prominent Banksy’s for years. eg recently in 2007 and 2009 and they were much bigger and more public. They should have a hard look at their own lack of preservation of the work of one of their most culturally significant artists of the recent era before they go criticising the colonies for being shortsighted.
not that i particularly like Banksy, but melbourne seems much more accepting of the artistic value of graffiti then London ever has been/

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what’s a banksy?

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enough said really. UK tabloids are the worst kind of newspaper. sensationalist, celebrity fuelled jizzrags.

fuck em

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My little bro was interviewed about his thoughts on this as he runs the We Make Stuff Good tours and wrote a piece on it for those who are interested: [Art Stuff] Melbourne council cleaners paint over Banksy stencil | We Make Stuff Good

  • Rachel
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What has always amazed me is how these graf dudes are now known by their tags, but never seem to be arrested etc for the work they do, when there is so much evidence of who they are and the work they do?
Do you somehow have to get known in the mainstream media and you then get a free pass to do whatever the hell you want?!
Like this Regan dude, a heap of his ‘work’ is up near my house, he is talking to the media using his full name AND his tag but he isn’t going to jail or fined ridiculous amounts of money for vandalism, wilful damage of property, trespassing or just being a sick adlay.
How is what they do any different to the 70k dudes and a few others that are probably sitting in jail for their ‘crimes’?!

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Basically you have to catch them in the act to successfully prosecute. Otherwise it just a case of “someone copied me” and copying someone’s work/tag is more common then one would think.