Everyone loves a new Banksy don’t they? There’s just something about edgy mysterious street art that’s just so, well, cool, right? Whenever a new Banksy drops everyone’s sharing that shit all over the internet and talking about how cool it is and how cool Banksy is and how it just, like, totally speaks to them in a way that really satirises modern society, you know? So it really isn’t that surprising that this new Banksy is celebrating (celebrating?) the Olympics, and it isn’t really that much of a surprise that he’s chosen to depict some really hard hitting issues that are surrounding the Olympics in his new street art either. It’s still fvcking cool though, obviously, I mean it’s a Banksy!
Banksy has treated us to not only one but two of his awesome pieces of street art to ‘celebrate’ the Olympics. Nobody knows where they’re located yet though as he’s only put them up on his website. The first one depicts an Olympic athlete but instead of throwing a javelin, he’s throwing a missile, you know presumably because all of the fuss that is going on about the fact that there are some anti aircraft missiles installed on top of people’s flats near the Olympic venue. It’s so on the ball, I guess it symbolises how the Olympics have become distorted from their original purpose of athletes from all over the world competing to find out who is the best into a giant security problem thanks to the spectre of terrorism and how this has negatively affected sport and unfortunately this is now ingrained on most people’s perceptions of the games. Or something like that, right?
The second picture is even better though. It’s of another Olympic athlete – this time a pole vaulter – but instead of competing at an actual pole vault he’s vaulting over a chain link barbed wire fence and landing on a dirty old mattress. I guess this symbolises how the Olympics were said to bring a lot of regeneration and gentrification and what have you to some of the slums of East London, but they haven’t really done that and it’s just as trashy as it’s always been. In fairness though if East London wasn’t trashy then most of its hipster population would move somewhere else, so maybe it’s a good thing for the thriving bar economy (even though they’re all unemployed, their little mommy’s will pay their bar tabs) in the area that this gentrification process or whatever hasn’t happened yet. Unsure. The symbolism in the street art is deep though bro. At least I think it is, if I’m understanding it correctly of course.
Whatever the exact meaning behind them though it seems like Banksy is part of the recent emerging ‘Fvck The Olympics’ gang. If you want to join I’m sure you can buy a t-shirt somewhere, or maybe even make your own. Tie dye it if you want!
Anyway, you can check out the new Banksy’s below. Let us know your interpretation. They are 100% better than these shitty official Olympics 2012 posters and the official Olympics song from Muse though. Whenyou look at those two things you can only really say that the Olympics have been a huge failure, even before they’ve started.
