THE LOST AND FOUND

Street art is like whatever to me and I’d much rather post graffiti, but this roller is on a large-scale destruction tip so… I deem it worthy. It’s good to see that Banksy isn’t too busy with art shows and book sales to go out and catch wreck.

LISTEN:
BIG MOSES: IS ART

“Amongst the most well known street artists today, Banksy has struck again in perhaps his most ironic piece of work yet. Seen painted on the side of a post office, his slogan “One Nation Under CCTV” was conducted behind a large fence with CCTV (surveillance camera) coverage. The job required the construction of three stories of scaffolding to complete the job and represents one of Banksy’s boldest attempts and the irony is brought on by the fact this was all happening under the “eye in the sky” surveillance cameras. However, with the surging popularity of Banksy, increased publicity and large sums his works command (however this was done on a post office), maybe somebody willingly turned the blind eye?”

(Courtesy of Hypebeast.com (Yeah, I’m admitting I actually check it once in a while. I was sort of surprised to find this on there though.))

I’m a bit late on this and I hear the good folks behind ICBC’s Bait Car program re-applied their stencil after this happened, but this is cool to see nonetheless. [Update: As of March 1st the Bait Car stencil is still gone and in its place is a stencil of 2 small black hearts] Although I can’t confirm with complete certainty that The Dark did this, I’m 95% sure.

To summarize, basically there’s a parking lot near Stadium station where they put this Banksy imitation up to intimidate car thieves, and a local “street” artist called The Dark decided to go over it. Not because he supports car theft obviously - here’s a brief explanation he provided:

”The Vancouver Police Department has been using graffiti inspired stencils in a fear-mongering campaign against car theft. Given the aggressive graffiti paint out program run by the City and the VPD it seemed like a bit of a contradiction to use “crime” (graffiti) to fight crime. The only thing left was to follow their outstanding example.” - The Dark

Some of The Dark’s work for those who aren’t familiar:

Big thanks to Jenn Chang for the heads up on this story!
Stay tuned, more info coming soon.