Continuing with our fortnightly artist study I recently hosted a session to look at the work of Banksy. This was a different session to the others that I have run as not a great deal is known about Banksy as an individual.
Why Banksy?
Throughout the sessions that I have run, I have sought to showcase a range of artists and different artistic styles. Some will be more appealing to the children than others and some will be more or less known than others. I am also keen to develop critical thought with my own children and an artist like Banksy raises a range of questions.
Issues such as why Banksy’s work is considered art whereas other graffiti art is vandalism, looking at how he uses existing features as part of his work and some detective work to see the links between the artists.
Materials Needed
For this session, I suggested that children might want to complete the artist profile page available from Twinkl.
- Artist Study Fact Sheet
- Wall image
How I ran the Session
This session, as I noted above, was run a little differently than usual. I had some internet issues on the day and of course, Banksy is a different artist in as much as we don’t know much about the individual.
I started the session by talking about graffiti, and we had looked at this a little with the Keith Haring study so the children were able to recall this. We walked about Banksy and how his work is seen as a commentary on what is happening both socially and politically. We talked about whether we thought his work was vandalism and if not, why not.
I then had some of his work to share with the children. We looked at a range of his work and talked about what we thought they might mean. We looked at the following pieces:
- Girl with Balloon (and I later shared this video of the shredded version)
- Hammer Boy
- Seasons Greetings – we watched the video here first for this one
- Superhero
- Escaping Prisoner
We then chatted a little about what is known about Banksy and I shared some of the theories as to who the real Banksy might be
Art Activity
I would usually run an art activity as part of the session but my internet was problematic so I instead left some ideas for the children to work with. I suggested taking photos of spaces in their own environments that they could then print and graffiti at home (using Hammer Boy as inspiration). I know some people, my own children included, printed a cartoon wall and graffitied that.
Follow up with my own children
With my own children, we have followed this up by adding to our artist project book and adding Banksy to our world map. We discussed graffiti more and watched some videos of Banksy’s work again. We talked a lot about the ethics of graffiti and whether we thought all of Banksy’s work is art, or whether the boundaries between art and vandalism are ever pushed too much.
It’s an interesting question as to why Banksy is art and other stuff is graffiti.
Interesting – esp the thinking about what makes Banksy’s work art and other vandalism – I woudnt want his work appearing on the external walls of my house as I would see that as vandalism, but elsewhere maybe I would see it as art
I think there is some of his stuff which is def more vandalism than art