The Graffiti Tunnel
Last Saturday I had one mission: to find Banksy art.
What I found was something cooler than I could have ever imagined.
I remember about 5 years ago when my friend first turned me onto Banksy. His computer desktop background was street art of a homeless man on the street holding a sign that said the words “Keep your coins, I want change.” It was such a poetic phrase that has stuck with me for a long time, and right then and there I became a Banksy fan.
My next big dose of Banksy came with the documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop. The initial hype of the movie made me incorrectly think this was a movie following Banksy around as he was putting up graffiti. This instantly peaked my interest, considering Banksy had never appeared on camera and his identity had never been known. Of course, I quickly found out the movie featured Banksy, but was more about his cameraman, and when Banksy appeared in the movie he wore a hood and talked with voice modulation.
Now I was in London, Banksy’s home turf, and I needed to find some of his art in the wild. Conveniently, someone made this map, which had google map locations of all his art spotted in the area. I took a few friends and went to one of the bigger groupings of points on the map, figuring that if some were painted over we’d still have a chance to see a few of them. After some bad luck initially, we walked down a tunnel and found more graffiti art than I had ever seen before.
The Tunnel, as it’s named, is a stretch of road under an overpass where graffiti is legally permitted in the city. By doing this, London has less graffiti around the city and graffiti artists have a way to showcase their work. The tunnel was full of art and it was extraordinary. There were even a few guys making art as we were walking through. I can’t really describe it in writing as well as I could show it, so here are a few pictures:
I haven’t given up on finding Banksy art yet, but at least I found something worth seeing.
