BEST BANKSY IN THE WORLD
The world is currently awash with touring unauthorised Banksy exhibitions purporting to provide a comprehensive survey of the art and philosophy of the best known living contemporary artist. The best collection of real spraypainted Banksy wall paintings is a little known Banksy paradise hidden from public view in the basement garage of the Swiss Embassy in London and now revealed to the public in a documentary on Suisse state tv channel RTS.
The embassy isn’t a place where the public can roam freely, primarily there is a security concern but the embassy also has historically felt hamstrung by a preference not to exploit its collection without Banksy’s consent and of course, as everyone who has ever attempted to work with Banksy knows, getting a response out of Pest Control who are his only known representatives is nigh impossible.
NEW GENERATION – 2001
So how did an embassy of all places get to be the home of the most exciting assembly of Banksy wall Paintings? The story goes back to a diplomatic endeavour to shrug off Switzerland’s somewhat prim and secretive reputation blotted by revelations in the late 90s regarding nazi gold. A series of events under the “New Generation” banner was programmed in 2001 to demonstrate that Switzerland was in touch with or relevant to the youth of the day, one of the events included a disco in the embassy garage. To provide an ambience suited to a youth gathering a combination of Swiss and British graffiti writers, street art had yet to be recognised as a legitimate culture at that point, were engaged in December 2000 to paint the walls of the underground space. The art survives intact to this date but is almost never seen.
That is until Swiss public tv channel Radio Television Suisse were invited at the start of February to make a short film about this extraordinary and truly unlikely collection of art.
TREASURE TROVE
The group of writers included TSA and RIGA from Switzerland and Banksy Chu and Snug from the UK. Only Banksy and TSA were present every evening over the week it took to paint the art
There are basically 15 Banksy artworks in the garage, though at a pinch if you could triple count a trio of monkeys painted on different sides of a pillar and two policemen on another pillar, and if you really want to abuse the statics by deconstructing the components of the brilliant Vulture Capitalism piece you could stretch the total to 35 Banksy elements.
Mickey Mouse has turned up to the party armed with a flame thrower, someone is out to assassinate Monal Lisa, a number of coppers hunt for the culprits and several antenna headed monkeys await the moment they are in charge. All the characters are singed by the flames at their feet and the party becomes the “DISCO INFERNO”, the caption painted on a ceiling.
There are combinations of recognisable Banksy stencil pieces assembled in new ways, example the bulldog that was painted in Manchester and at Barton Hill is combined with the poodle that appeared in Cargo (often seen n the Shoreditch Street Art Tour) to create a fantasy piece in which the poodle imagines it is a bulldog, though that artwork was relocated to a office upstairs in the embassy and isn’t seen in the RTS clip. The guard figure also at cargo sporting a torch and holding a poodle by a lead in the garage has the torch replaced by a truncheon and the poodle has escaped.
British graffiti writer Chu was the leading edge of stereoscopic spraypainting at that time and it was a pleasure to join Chu in the garage for a moving and emotional reunion with the quite spectacular paintings based on sound system elements, only one of which is embassy approved for publicity.
SWISS TV REVELATIONS
RTS from Switzerland were allowed to make a short programme about the embassy’s unique Banksy collection, ahead of the site being turned over for a long refurbishment. They invited me to be interviewed and to visit the garage space again. It was a pleasure to be able to view the art in the garage again in February in the company of Chu along with the tv people and members of the embassy cultural attaché team. Wisely they decided that the art in the garage was more interesting to look at than me and left my contribution out though a few of my thoughts appear in the accompanying article on the RTS website and in the outtakes on their Instagram post. The English version can be seen here (coming soon!)
The accompanying photos published in connection with the RTS broadcast were taken by me in the year 2021. The then ambassador gave me the opportunity to empty the garage of (almost) all cars to create a record of the murals and write an unpublished written record of the history. Quite a thrill!
The impact of the spectacular panorama of Banksy in surround sound in the garage is not really apparent from the photos presented here, which are a selection which the Embassy consented to, nor in the RTS clips. Secrecy huh, old habits die hard! There is one particular Banksy mural which is not available online which the Embassy curiously didn’t allow to published, it is hard to tell whether the secrecy springs from hiding the layout of the embassy basement public or the dark hand of Banksy.
Also not seen are a ceiling high ghoulish anamorphic portrait by British writer Snug, several murals by the Swiss artists and some large graffiti writings, about which there are conflicting claims regarding the writer(s) in involved.
It is a delight that the Suisse Embassy has partially lifted the veil on their stunning art collection at last, the RTS broadcast makes a major contribution to the Banksy knowledge base. If you enjoy the photos published here for the first time why not join the Shoreditch Street Art Tour for the best street art tour in the world, it will include actual Banksy street art and also check out the Shoreditch Street Art Tous blog for historical insights going back to the earliest days of modern street art.
LINKS:
RTS Suisse Documentary by Michael Maccabez HERE
Banksy website: HERE
RTS Instagram post HERE
All photos copyright Dave Stuart of Shoreditch Street Art Tours
