arts + lit Selling Banksy
A
Maggie John explores the commodification of street art in light of the recent sale of a Banksy in Nottingham
BANKSY mural of a little girl hulahooping with a bicycle tyre has been removed from a wall in Nottingham and has been sold to a gallery in Essex. According to The Guardian, Brandler Galleries in Brentwood paid the building owner a sixfigure sum. It’s no surprise that many residents are disappointed by the news. One person tweeted that they were “sad that the Banksy in Nottingham is not going to stay in Nottingham”. Another man explained how the mural has brought “enjoyment and delight” in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is not the first time residents have experienced the sale of Banksy’s work. A Banksy appeared on the side of a garage in Port Talbot, South Wales and was also sold to Brandler Galleries. However, it was agreed
that the Banksy would stay in Port Talbot for at least two years. The owner of the garage described the sale as “a weight off my shoulders”.
BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR A BANKSY MUST BE INCREDIBLY OVERWHEMING It’s understandable why people want to buy and sell Banksy’s work. He’s no ordinary street artist and his work is worth a tremendous amount of money. Furthermore, being responsible for a Banksy must be incredibly overwhelming and if you’re offered a large sum of money, that can be very difficult to turn down. Yet at the same time, it poses certain
questions. There will have been a reason why Banksy decided to paint where he did. By removing it from that location, does it lose part of its meaning? I think it’s important to preserve Banksy’s work but at the same time I think it should remain in its original town.
BANKSY IS STREET ART AND IN AN IDEAL WORLD THAT’S WHERE IT WOULD BE KEPT There are arguments that it’s an important act of preservation, yet other people may argue that it’s in fact an act of commodification. Banksy’s work makes a lot of money and also encourages a lot of interest. If it’s in a gallery for example, people will travel there
to see it. If it’s removed and taken to another town or city, that town isn’t benefiting from it at all. Banksy is street art and in an ideal world that’s where it would be kept and enjoyed but that is not always possible. His work is very important, and it does need to be preserved. When it is left in its original location, it is at risk. Unfortunately, the removal of Banksy’s work from where they appear and moving them into galleries is probably as much an act of preservation as it is a commodification of street art. The best situation would be to keep it in its town, so residents can enjoy it, whilst also encouraging tourism and an interest in the area. It is equally important to respect the town and its residents as it is to preserve his important work. Image: Eric Ward, Unsplash
The bicentenary of John Keats J
Caitlin Barr discusses the legacy of John Keats to honour the bicentenary of his death
OHN Keats, who died 200 years ago in late-February, was a poet whose Romantic-era works still pervade our literary culture today. He died tragically young, aged just 25, from tuberculosis, but published 54 poems spanning a variety of genres, from sonnets to Miltonian epics. He had no formal literary education, and yet his work has inspired many other writers and poets. Born to a stable-manager and his wife, Keats went on to study at a liberal school in Enfield, where he learned how to translate French and Latin. Literature was a refuge for him after his father died in a carriage accident and his mother died just years later from TB, which would later kill Keats himself. Keats’ bicentenary brings into sharp focus just how much of an impact the young poet had on his contemporaries and modern-day poets alike. Percy Shelley was greatly inspired
by Keats and wrote an elegy for him after his death, referring to him as “the loveliest and the last”. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who would later become Poet Laureate, regarded him as the greatest poet of the century. T.S. Eliot and war poet Wilfred Owen also cited Keats as inspirational to their works. More recently, his influence can be seen in the work of many writers including 20th century poet Wallace Stevens and modern-day author Neil Gaiman. Less specifically, his themes of morality, desire, beauty, and the natural world are themes which run through much of literature today. My favourite piece by Keats is ‘Modern Love’, a playful poem about the all-encompassing, life-changing journey of falling in love. In particular, the lines “common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;/Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,/And Antony resides in Brunswick Square” bring a smile to my face as
I picture these typical romantic figures wearing wellies and taking the bins out at number seven.
200 YEARS ON, WE CAN DEFINITELY SAY HE DID MAKE HIMSELF “REMEMBER’D” Keats once wrote “I have left no immortal work behind me – nothing to make my friends proud of my memory – but I have lov’d the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember’d” in a letter to his sister, Fanny. 200 years on from his death, we can definitively say that he did, in fact, make himself “remember’d”. Immortalised in his work, he is now thought to be one of the greatest of our
nation’s poets. I love his work for its freeness, its humanity, and its relevance to our own modern world. I can only imagine what he’d have gone on to create given more time. Image: Pexels