Some years ago - I think after the Brexit result, but not long after - I was in Hemel Hempstead (Old Hemel to be precise) to have a meal at the Cochin, this great little South Indian restaurant. And just over the road, in the window of some kind of bric-a-brac place, I saw the poster above. Although I disagreed with the sentiment, I couldn't help admiring the eye-grabbing cleverness of it as agit-prop.
Fast forward to this year and I come across this bit o' Banksy.
My thought: how clever, Banksy's detourning the Leave campaign art.
Then I realised the image is a twist on his own famous "woman vomits hearts" image - the iconic anti-romance statement.
But where is the pro-Brexit image in the sequence?
Is it a Brexiteer riposte to Banksy's anti-Brexit twist on his own work?
Or did the Leavers do it first, twisting on the "vomiting hearts" work with their vomming up the European flag stars?
Then causing Banksy to counter with the UKIP-upchuck image?
Here's another well known Banksy image about the UK leaving the EC
But wait, there's more - another twist to the tale
Banksy has long been rumored to be Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack fame, aka 3D - a well-known graf artist back in the 1980s.
Now Massive Attack's Protection tour had a whole European supranational mega-state theme that was oddly congruent with the Leave viewpoint. From my 1994 interview with Massive:
"... A Levis-sponsored, free exhibition is to accompany Massive's tour this autumn, displaying computer-generated art, screenprints, 'aerosonic' paintings and fibre-glass sculptures of the Eurochild. The latter is both the band's "corporate logo" this time round and a somewhat cloudy symbol of something or other (shades of Pink Floyd's flying pig, anyone?).
"On the last album we had the industrial symbols on the sleeve," explains 3D. "This time round we've come up with the Eurochild, a cartoon image based on the concept of European consumerism and fascism. I originally did it for The Face, this kid with a swastika and a knife and fork and a crown of thorns made out of the European stars. The Eurochild is a character that represents the parts of Europe and the fact that the parts will eventually attack the whole.
"See, the unification of Europe is only gonna serve those already on the top of the pile, enabling them to trade more easily. Those who are disadvantaged aren't going to benefit from being unified. In fact they'll probably lose their livelihoods cos no one's gonna buy their local cheeses in the supermarket. The statement we're making isn't anti- EC, it's just that--as with America--when you've got a lot of cultures brought together in one geographical zone then you're gonna get a lot of chaos and violence and panic.That's why you're getting the resurgence of racism. It's the panic-merchants stirring up all the anxieties people have that are economic at root. We're just asking what it means to be 'European', what difference unification is going to make?"
At very least it's bizarrely prophetic about what ensued....
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Must say, I'm not much of a Banksy fan - as one-liner street art, it's amusing enough, and occasionally acerbic .... the logistical ingenuity of pulling off any given piece is impressive.... but as something to look at, as line and colour and the rest, nah...
