Blek Le Rat Original

joining the history of fleeting messages, cleaned off by generations of council workers from Pompeii to Peckham.

The difference with this generation, led by Banksy, but originated by Blek le Rat 20 years previously, is that their street art has become permanent in many ways. Not only fully documented with film and photography, but the some of the original paintings and stencils themselves have been preserved for posterity on the walls of his home town, as have those of Banksy.

And as this is the case, it would seem churlish to criticise him for making original paintings on canvas with his stencils for inclusion in gallery shows. Now, street art didn’t just begin because its artists couldn’t get into galleries, and so used city walls, no, much of the meaning of the work is contextual. Take the rats off the walls and spray them onto canvas hung in a gallery, and they become mere parodies. Illustrations in memory of their brave forbears who ran through Paris in their thousands.  Or perhaps not, perhaps they carry with them the memory of those forbears as they travel onwards and upwards.