Banksy Timeline
Banksy Timeline
1998
Key events in the Banksy story in a timeline – from early days in Bristol to Glasgow’s ‘Cut and Run.
1998
Banksy stages his first show in a flat in Easton, Bristol including an early version of Love Is In The Air depicting a rioter throwing a bouquet of flowers set against the backdrop of Trafalgar Square during the Poll Tax Riots.
anksy collaborates with Indie to put on the Walls on Fire two day graffiti artist paint battle in August located in the Bristol Docks.
1999
Banksy paints ‘The Mild, Mild West’ in Stokes Croft, Bristol. The work depicts a teddy bear throwing a Molotov cocktail at riot police officers.
2000
Solo exhibition at the Severnshed – 28th Feb to 3rd April (Bristol)
On March 4th Banksy.co.uk was registered for the first time.
2001
Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall , Banksy’s first book in an A6 size format released.
May: May 31st he holds a solo pop up exhibition in Rivington Street, East London around the Cargo club.
2002
Existencilism exhibition – July 19th (Los Angeles)
July: Banksy hosts his ‘Existencilism – an Exhibition of Art, Lies and Deviousness‘ show in Los Angeles at the 331⁄3 Gallery in Siver Lake.
A second book, Existencilism again in A6 size is released.
2003
May: Pre orders open for Banksy’s third book ‘Cut It Out’ open.
May: Banksy tags the side of the Thekla nightclub boat.
June: Banksy has a show ‘Bad Press’ at Kunsthalle Exnergasse in Vienna, Austria. The show runs from 25th June to 25th July.
July: Turf War often considered a break through exhibition, opens in London on a scale and audacity nor previously attempted. Featuring live animals, it doesn’t quite last its full run.
Pictures On Walls started, featuring the work of Banksy and other artists.
October: Banksy smuggles works into a series of Museums and Galleries including Tate Britain, The Louvre and the Museum of Modern Art.
November: A series of new Banksy rats appeared in Brighton all along the seafront.
November:
2004
February: Banksy’s take on Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’, aptly named the Drinker / Dunce was installed under the Westway in West London. It was subsequently moved to a more central location before being kidnapped / stolen.
Banksy’s third and final A6 book Cut It Out was released.
April: A series of new rats appeared on the Southbank of the Thames along with a giant sized rat on the Old Street railway bridge proclaiming ‘We Will Win’.
April: Banksy smuggles an artwork of a rat with a spray can into the Natural History Museum with the message ‘Our Time Will Come’
August: Banksy installed a new monument ‘Justice’ statue in Clerkenwell Square. The unveiling was attended by 100’s. Around this time Banksy started distributing his ‘Di-Faced Tenners’ and a print of ten of the tenners was released.
2005
June: Two new versions of Kissing Coppers appeared in London. Neither lasted very long with the one in Soho having its faces scrubbed off and the other in Shepherds Bush completely removed.
August – ‘Snorting Copper’ and ‘Dustbin Spy’ pieces appear in London. There are more than one versions of the snorting copper and each has a very long line of white paint leading up to it. The bridge by Shoreditch station in Old Street is updated to read ‘Another Crap Advert’.
August: Nine new Banksy works appeared on the Israeli West Bank Wall.
September: ‘Thug For Life’ featuring three pensioners hanging on to their hip hop trappings from their youth appears on a wall in Clerkenwell.
October: London’s upmarket Notting Hill is the site of Banksy’s pop up Crude Oils gallery show – which only allows four visitors in at a time to gaze at the art accompanied by 200 live rats.
November: Wall and Piece , a large format work featuring much of the work from the first three A6 books along with a wealth of new material is released via Random house. It rapidly becomes the best selling art book of 2005 / 6.
December: Jack and Jill print is released at Santa’s Ghetto where an original canvas of the same image was also on display. Also on sale is the £400 Grin Reaper print with a special finish.
2006
September: Barely Legal show opens in Los Angeles attracting Hollywood A listers to downtown LA and featuring a very much alive real ‘elephant in the room’.
August: Paris Hilton’s vacuous album is reworked by Banksy and Dangerous and in a widespread reverse shoplifting operation it is placed into UK record stores.
May: Two Banksy maids appear – ‘Sweeping It Under the Carpet’ has versions in both Chalk Farm and outside the White Cube Gallery in Hoxton.
May: Several new pieces appear with vandals painting over a ‘Graffiti Reporting Hotline’ number.
July: Banksy’s Pulp Fiction with bananas location is updated with a retake – Pulp fiction wearing bananas.
September: Banksy installs a Guantanamo Bay detainee figure on a ride at Disneyland which results in the ride being promptly shutdown. The stunt garners worldwide headlines.
December: Banksy’s ‘Flags’ £100 print goes on sale, creating huge queues in Oxford Street and raising a cool £100,000 for Sightsavers
2007
February: Banksy work appears at Sotheby’s with Bomb Middle England selling for £102,000. Nearby a slew of rats appear on the street bearing the slogan ‘You Lie’.
June: It’s been a while but a gorilla in a pink mask appears, peering out at passers by in Fishponds Road, Bristol.
June: Banksy makes an appearance at Glastonbury festival with his ‘Portaloo Sunset’ – a kind of Stonehenge made out of portaloos.
August: A graffiti painter painting rude graffiti appears in Bethnal Green.
September: Banksy’s tribute to Ozone appears on the location of his infamous Pulp Fiction With Bananas work above Old Street Underground station. Elsewhere a graffiti painter appears in Ladbroke Grove and a ‘Ratapault’ featuring a cat and and a rat appears in Whitecross Street.
October: Banksy’s Yellow Lines flower painter appears subverting parking restrictions in Bethnal Green.
December: Santa’s Ghetto, the Pictures on Walls pop up shop, pops up thus year in Palestine – Bethlehem to be precise.
2008
February: Two new Banksy pieces appear in London – Fisher Boy in Southwark and ‘Take This Society’ on Shepherds Bush Roundabout.
May: The Cans Festival group show opens in the previously grotty Leake Street tunnel underneath Waterloo station in London. Featuring around 50 other artists it also included a free for all area for anyone to have a go at stencilling.
August: New Orleans sees multiple new Banksy pieces referencing the plight of New Orleans residents following Hurricane Katrina.
October: The ‘Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill‘ opens in New York. “There have been complaints from people who are unhappy about being on their way to work and seeing two hot dogs performing a sex act. But it’s no more unnatural than the process behind making a sausage in the first place.”
2009
March: Two new Banksy works appear in London – A hip hop boy in Gillett Square, Dalston and ‘Last Graffiti Before Motorway’ in Hendon, North London.
March: Banksy contributes a reworked version of his ‘Very Little Helps’ canvas for charity. The Tesco bag is replaced with a underwear emblazoned with a Union Jack.
June: Banksy Vs The Bristol Museum A homecoming show in Bristol see’s Banksy take over the Bristol Museum with over 100 artworks and more than 300,000 visitors. The show runs for three months, opening Saturday 13th June through to Sunday 31st August.
July: Ronald McDonald is installed outside the Bristol Museum show, perched up above an entrance. A lottery system is opened for Banksy’s ‘Donuts’ print release from Pictures on Walls.
September: Several new pieces appear in London during the month. First up in Croydon a punk struggling to assemble IKEA furniture appears on a wall followed by several new pieces in North London including No Ball Games. Additionally the Westway Highwayman appears.
December: Four new Banksy works appear along the Camden canal. One proves to be controversial as it goes over a very old and very battered / tagged King Robbo piece.
2010
January: Robbo reported as hitting back at Banksy modifying the Regents Canal pieces to suit him. Cinema timings are released for Exit Through The Gift Shop.
February: Two new Banksy interviews appear in Time Out and the Sunday Times.
March: Advertising (some of it guerrilla) for Exit Through The Gift Shop appears in London, including on the Underground.
April: Banksy updates the Regents Canal pieces in retaliation to Robbos reworking as the tit for tat spat continues.
April: Multiple new Banksy works appear in San Francisco.
August: A solitary new Banksy of a child playing in a Tesco sandcastle appears in Hastings.
September: More new pieces are revealed on Banksy.co.uk with a bear catching a dead fish in Deptford (!), a reconditioned Dolphin caught in a net ride in Brighton and a petrol headed bird in Dungeness.
September: Original Banksy artworks are placed between the aisles and in the windows of HMV to promote the UK release of ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ on September 6th.
September: Three new Banksy pieces are revealed via a post on the Wooster Collective blog. Their locations, however, take a longer time to work out. ‘No Future’ is in Southampton, ‘I Love you’ and ‘Keep Britain Tidy’ were on the Isle of Wight.’
Exit Through The Gift Shop A documentary film was released & promoted in the UK by his Lambeth Palace Cinema – a pop up film venue in the tunnels underneath Waterloo station.
October: Banksy’s ‘Boxhead’ appears on the side of a hotel in Torquay and is quickly covered up and then perspexed. In London work inspired by previous artists appears featuring a rework of the iconic Clash ‘London Calling’ album cover and a Keith Haring dog appears.
October: Banksy scripts the opening sequence of the Simpsons Tv show.
November: Pop up shop / art show ‘Marks & Stencils’ opens up in Soho London, The Pictures on Walls event is the last of its kind to be staged in London.
December: Pictures on Walls release the Choose Your Weapon print. Chaos ensues.
2011
January: Banksy’s film ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop‘ made the shortlist for Best Documentary Feature in the Oscars. In February a batch of new Banksy pieces appeared in Los Angeles.
January – A new piece ‘Sperm Alarm’ is revealed in London’s Victoria area.
February: Several new pieces appeared in LA including Charlie Brown with a petrol can.
February: Banksy used some of the money from the sale of ‘Choose Your Weapon’ prints to raise money for bail for members of the Russian art group Voina.
April: A rat appeared in central London with the slogan ‘If graffiti changed anything…it would be illegal‘ – which it obviously is!
April: Several Banksy pieces appear in MOCA’s ‘ Art On The Streets show in Los Angeles.
June: Banksy pays tribute to veteran peace campaigner Brian Haw and paints a new piece referencing the graffiti artist Tox who was due to be sentenced on July 1st.
August: A new cartoon figure appeared in Chrisp Street, Wapping – the home of many media outlets. ‘Brinngg! Brinngg! My phones been tapped‘ used an existing tap on a wall to make a point about phone hacking.
August: A sign saying ‘Welcome to the West Country. Please don’t laugh at our accent’ appeared on Banksy.co.uk – it was in place on the M32 three months prior.Banksy also releases ‘The Antics Roadshow’ which aired on Channel 4.
December: A new Banksy work ‘Cardinal Sin’ went on show in the Walker gallery in Liverpool and coincided with a street piece of a plane creating a smoke trail of a heart in the same city. Several other works also appeared on his website including a falling shopper in Mayfair and Sorry…the lifestyle you ordered is out of stock. There was a candle tribute to Robbo painted on the canal in Camden.
2012
May: A new work depicting a child making Union Jack bunting appeared on the side of a Poundland store in Wood Green, London. On Banksy.co.uk he posts a hi-res image ‘Er’ which can be downloaded and printed on anything for personal use.
July: Banksy revealed two new pieces in time for the London Olympics although the locations have never been found.
2013
October: What seemed like a quiet year but then Better Out Than In arrived – a month long New York Residency featuring a new Banksy artwork each day.
2014
March: Girl With A Balloon is projected on to Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square as part of the #withsyria campaign.
April: ‘Spy Booth (Cheltenham) and ‘Mobile Lovers’ (Bristol) street pieces appear.
October: Two new pieces appear in coastal towns, the first in the South in Folkestone and the second in the East in Clacton on Sea.
October: The Girl With The Pierced Eardrum, a play on Johanne Vermeer’s Girl With A Pearl Earring but with an alarm in the place of jewellery, appeared in Bristol’s Hanover Place.
2015
February: Banksy revealed four new works from Gaza along with an accompanying ‘tourist guide’ video which explains the plight of its inhabitants.
August: Banksy opens the Dismaland Bemusement Park in Weston Super Mare, UK, it runs until 27th September after which time it is dismantled. From the Dismaland website: “All the building materials were recycled into shelters for homeless migrants and the specially trained surly and unhelpful staff were relocated to Virgin customer services”.
December: Four new pieces in Calais appear on Banksy.co.uk but one really grabs the attention of media organisations worldwide. It depicts Steve Jobs carrying an early Apple computer and a bag of possessions. It looks like he’s a fugitive and makes a point about the amazing things migrants can contribute.
2016
January: A new work based on Les Miserables artwork and opposite the French Embassy in London tackles the way people are treated in the Calais refugee camp. The piece included a QR code which takes the viewer directly to a video on the subject.
2017
March: The Walled Off Hotel opens at the West Bank Barrier Wall, The hotel is not aligned to any particular movement or pressure group. Guests are encouraged to understand the wall from all sides with the only restrictions on who can stay being a ban on anyone exhibiting fanaticism.
May: Banksy also creates one his largest works to date with his Dover Brexit wall. It’s clearly visible to every person leaving the UK via Dover.
September: Banksy revealed his contribution to ‘Art The Arms Fair’ on September 11th – part of a protest aiming at stopping the Defence and Security Equipment (DESI) taking place in London from the 12th to the 15th September 2017.
September: Banksy created two new artworks under the Barbican centre in Central London. They referenced the imminent opening of the first large scale exhibition of the American artist Jean Michel Basquiat.
October: It’s announced that Pictures On Walls is closing down, there’s a chance to snap up stock and a lottery for the remaining copies of Banksy’s Sale Ends print.
December: On Sunday 17th December Banksy’s ‘The Alternativity’ aired on BBC2. The challenge of trying to make it snow in Palestine is juxtaposed with the challenges of everyday life – queueing for hours just to get to work or just not being able to travel outside the wall at all.
2018
January: Banksy paints ‘Draw The Raised Bridge’ in Hull, which was UK City of Culture in 2017.
March: Banksy appears in New York with two new artworks. The first is a a beautiful rat on a clock as if it’s a wheel. The second work more importantly calls for the release of Zehra Dogan, who was imprisoned by Turkey for her painting of the devastation in the predominantly Kurdish town of Nusaybin.
June: With Grayson Pery curating the Royal Academy’s Summer Show, Banksy is asked to submit a piece and he puts forward a revised version of his previously rejected artwork Vote To Love and it is displayed in Gallery III.
October: Banksy’s A Girl With A Balloon canvas shreds itself seconds after it sells for nearly a million at Sotheby’s. Multiple new street works appear on Paris.
December: Banksy paints ‘Seasons Greetings’ in Port Talbot on the side of a steelworkers garage. It depicts a child enjoying what they think is snow but a look around the corner of the building reveals it is in fact ash from a fire.
December: Banksy also launches a raffle for one of the boats featured in his Dismaland boating lake exhibit which went on display in Covent Garden.
2019
June: Banksy’s ‘Keep Ou’ is included in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. It shows a rat smashing a padlock off a Customs doorway arch salvaged from Heathrow Airport, using the letter T from ‘Keep Out’ to do so.
October: Banksy opens his Gross Domestic Product Store in Croydon UK. Except the store never actually opens – it could only be viewed by peering in through the windows of the store.
2020
May: Banksy donates ‘Game Changer’, a canvas depicting a child choosing to play with a caped nurse toy rather than the usual super heroes. It remains on display in Southampton hospital until it is eventually sold for £16.8m to raise money for health charities.
August: Banksy reveals via Instagram and a video his work on the London Underground which was immediatley removed. Entitled ‘If you don’t mask, you don’t get’ it features several masked rats causing havoc in a underground train carriage.
Late August: Banksy funds high speed rescue boat St Michel to rescue migrants in trouble in the Mediterranean.
November: Banksy paints a girl using a tyre as a hula hoop from a nearby broken bicycle in Nottingham UK.
December: Banksy paints ‘Aachoo!‘ on the side of a property using the incline of a road (reportedly one of the steepest in England) to enhance the effect of the pensioner depicted sneezing.
2021
March: Banksy installs ‘Create Escape’ on the wall of the former Reading jail in Berkshire, UK.
August: Banksy visits Lowestoft, Gorleston, Great Yarmouth, Cromer and Kings Lynn installing 10 pieces as part of his Great British Spraycation.
December: Banksy releases a limited edition ‘Bristol’ T shirt which is sold directly by independent shops in Bristol in aid of the Colston 4.
2022
November: seven new Banksy artworks appear in war torn areas of Ukraine.
December: Banksy follows this up with a limited edition (50) print lottery raising funds for the Legacy Of War foundation.
2023
February: On Valentines Day Banksy posts a new piece on Instagram. ‘Valentine’s Day Mascara‘, on a wall in Margate, deals with domestic violence themes and is widely reported.
February: One of Banksy’s artworks from Ukraine ,depicting a child throwing down a far bigger opponent, is turned into an official postage stamp, by Ukraine’s Postal Service. The stamp raises funds for rebuilding educational facilities.
March: Morning is Broken is revealed to be be on the side of a disused farm building in Herne Bay via Banksy’s Instagram. Except it wasn’t – having been demolished shortly after installation.
June: Banksy opened his first full solo show since 2009’s Bristol Museum show. Cut and Run in Glasgow is based on 25 years card labour by the artist with many of his original stencils on display.
December: A Stop sign in Commercial Way Peckham was amended into a Stop War sign by the addition by Banksy of three resin drones – with the whole installation stolen within 30 minutes of being revealed.