Banksy not welcome here!

A stencil, allegedly painted by street artist Banksy, uncovered in the Northern Quarter has not met the approval of everyone.

Manchester City Council moved swiftly to protect the artwork, with a view to possibly selling it themselves, if indeed it is genuine. The Council had it covered it with a Perspex screen and for two weeks the stencil was also guarded behind two metal fences, these have since been removed.

Displaying the ‘artwork’ in this fashion has not been greeted with universal appreciation. Some graffiti writers and local residents alike have been appalled that what is technically an act of vandalism is now being cherished by the Council. PW posted this on the Manchester Evening News website: “Why is he regarded as some kind of a hero by our City Council?

Don't they spend hundreds of thousands of pounds
trying to stop and to clean up this kind of art?”

It now appears as if actions to preserve the piece were well informed, as there have since been numerous attempts to deface the original, some of which have been widely documented on the internet, particularly on the photo sharing website flickr. One blogger, going by the name ‘Young Oldboy’, posted this comment 2 weeks ago: “Buy some gasoline and destroy this piece of shit!” 

Within hours of the Banksy being discovered, a tag reading ‘WKY’ (apparently standing for We Kill Yuppies) had appeared on the Perspex, and the words ‘Team Robbo’ above it.

There are some websites that provide more clues as to why Manchester City Council moved so quickly to protect the work.

www.team-robbo-vs-banksy.blogspot.com and www.team-robbo-vs-banksy.proboards.com are web pages dedicated to charting the story between Banksy and a London graffiti writer Robbo who bears a grudge against the former for defacing a piece of his work that had remained intact for over 25 years.

Team Robbo, according to the website stands for “all of us freehand graffiti writers and not your stencil street art middle class art students” who are intent on destroying and defaming any work by Banksy. And as recent developments would suggest they now have a Manchester branch. Robbo was readily available to contact via email and said: “it’s good to see our Northern brothers are keeping the flag flying high.”

Whilst the fences may have been removed, the box covering the stencil remains, but how long will it last before it ends up in a gallery, or on a trendy Northern Quarter flat wall, or perhaps destroyed and lost forever at the hands of militant guerrilla artists? Watch this space...

Written by Tim Walker