I didn’t know a great deal about Banksy before visiting this Banksy Limitless exhibition so really was not sure what to expect. It is located near South Kensington tube station, and as luck would have it, a tube strike was announced for the day we had booked our tickets. Fortunately there were still some District line trains running and we managed to squeeze on and arrive on time. The outside of the building did not look very promising and I wondered if we had wasted our £26 ticket price- we hadn’t, the exhibition is amazing and so different to anything I have seen before.

What I did know is that Banksy is a street artist, his artwork tends to be subversive and that he is anonymous . Whenever a new painting of his appears on the side of a building it is reported in the press alongside speculation as to his identity. Apparently the most likely candidate is an artist from Bristol, Robin Gunningham. I had no idea that Banksy had produced such a large and varied volume of work or that he is a prominent social campaigner who actually puts his money where his mouth is (as my mum would say) all of his work is some sort of social commentary . Just this week a statue of a pompous looking man being blinded by a flag has appeared in Waterloo Place. Banksy has claimed responsibility and Westminster council seem thrilled.

Probably the most famous work of Bansky’s is the stencilled graffiti image There Is Always Hope, sometimes referred to as Girl With Balloon. It is worth visiting the exhibition just to find out what happened when this work was sold at Sothebys. There is a variation of this painting on display, a little girl holding a heart shaped buoyancy aid, for the people who drown making illegal crossings across the channel. Banksy has even bought a French lifeboat to help these people. There is a model of passengers sitting on a packed dinghy and a claim that distress calls relating to these crossings are deliberately ignored.

As well as being a talented artist Banksy is a master of puns. There is a huge painting on display of apes in the House of Commons called Devolved Parliament. A picture of Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz is captioned “I don’t think we’re on canvas anymore…” His take on Disney land, a whole theme park installation is titled Dismaland. The cover photo shows a huge Little Mermaid display. Inside there is a killer whale with its trainer holding a hoop for it to dive through into a tiny blow-up paddling pool.

There is so much to see at this exhibition including details of his collaboration with Blur for their Think Tank album artwork . There is a whole mock up of a Tube station named Prakadilly Circus complete with advertisements. One features a photo of Mother Theresa with the caption “I learnt a valuable lesson from this woman, moisturise every day”. There is a piece of art titled Napalm showing the iconic 1972 image of nine year old Vietnamese girl Phan Thi Kim Phúc, terribly burned, running naked with her arms out at her side. In Banksy’s work she is flanked by Ronald McDonald and Mickey Mouse who both look horrifyingly cheerful.

This has been one of the most interesting and entertaining exhibitions I have visited. I don’t see how anyone can fail to enjoy it.

Thank you for reading

Samantha