BBC News are reporting this morning the famous Banksy ‘Sniper’ piece near the Childrens Hospital has been vandalised. Obviously this is a great shame, but this is by no means the first time this has happened and certainly won’t be the last. Whilst researching the Banksy Bristol Tour App I discovered that four pieces have been lost in Bristol over the last year.
Pembroke Road in Clifton used to have a leopard walking througha barcode, it was very faded but sat all by itself on the side of a house probably for the best part of ten years. Then earlier this year someone decided the build a house over it. You would think that it might have been worth taking the Banksy piece off wouldn’t you? Apparently the builder did ask the neighbours if they knew who the piece was by, but none of them knew. So he built over it anyway!
Down in St Werburghs there was another old piece, the ‘Playing it safe can cause a lot of damage in the long run’ stencil. The wall which graced this fine advice has now a been painted a nice shade of mustard. Yes, mustard.
Then most recently we have had the Gorilla which was unwittlingly painted over, partally restored (although not enough in my opinion) and now has been badly re-tagged also with black spray paint btw. And now the Snipper has had it.
Of course street art purists will tell you that it isn’t meant to be permanent, but look in any museum and they are full of all sorts of old rubbish that wasn’t built to last. More importantly try and imagine Bristol with no Banksy pieces….crap, isn’t it?
So what is to be done? I am going to stick my neck out and say we should look at perspexing some of the remaining pieces in Bristol. Although not an ideal solution, the one in Kingsdown looks good and has added many years to its shelf-life. Perspexed pieces do tend to attract even more taggers who object that anyone should have their work preserved, but what is the alternative? More expensive restorations? More lost pieces?
Mild, Mild West is starting to look knackered anyway, leave it another couple of years and there will be nothing left worth preserving. One day you will be telling your grand kids ‘there used to be a Banksy here’ and then they will laugh at you when you tell them that ‘it wasn’t in the nature of street art to preserve them’.
