Archway mural sprayed over by rival aerosol gang
King Robbo or one of his followers may have been responsible for the loss of a major Banksy this week. The Archway mural at Junction Road, opposite McDonald’s, has been sprayed over with black paint. Another Banksy near Quinn’s pub in Camden Town was also damaged but the owner of the building had fortunately taken precautions to protect the work of art.
The Islington times reported that arch rival King Robbo may have left the hospital after sustaining head injuries which saw him on life support for weeks last summer. A spokesman for Team Robbo said: “We don’t believe that information about Robbo leaving hospital today or any time soon is correct.” In August, Robbo was found close to his home suffering from a life-threatening head injury and was put into an induced coma.“Regarding the Archway piece, Team Robbo and Team Banksy are still ‘at war’ and, unfortunately, there is sometimes collateral damage to innocent artworks,” the spokesman added.“It has become increasingly hard for us to verify whether or not a specific artwork has been attacked or damaged in crossfire. Furthermore, many writers outside the Team Robbo crew in London are involved in covert actions.”
Robbo, was the biggest Eighties tagger, He gained respect for knowing how to gain access to difficult inaccessible areas in order to write his name on tubes and trains, winning a large audience for his work. Incorporating another graffiti artist’s work into your own without permission is not done in that world.This caused a tit-for-tat campaign with Banksy where Robbo would in revenge deface a work of Banksy’s and Banksy or one of his partisans would retaliate.
Banksy’s work typically includes satirical social and political commentary, and ranges from murals to sculpture and installation, often playing with the contextual aspects of the work. The artist’s first solo show was held in 2002 at Los Angeles’ 33 1/3 Gallery, and in 2003 he was commissioned to design to cover of Blur’s ThinkTank. Today, Banksy’s work appears internationally; most notably, he painted nine sardonic images on the Palestinian side of the West Bank barrier. In Summer 2009, Banksy took over the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery with an exhibition attracting over 300,000 visitors and hour-long queues all the way down the road. Most recently the artist has experimented with film, achieving an Oscar nomination for his documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop. Read More