A javelin thrower stands poised to make his throw — but in place of a spear, he holds a missile.
The striking image, stenciled in black onto a dirty wall, is one of two new works recently unveiled on the website of British satirical street artist Banksy to coincide with the London Olympics.
The other shows a pole-vaulter, springing over a rusty fence onto an abandoned mattress.
Photo: AFP
Banksy — whose works sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars — is famed for his secrecy, but his witty observations about British life can usually be spotted on the street.
The location of the two new stencils, however, has been kept under wraps — prompting speculation that Banksy feared they could be removed as part of a reported drive to clean graffiti from London’s walls for the Olympics.
British Transport Police arrested four graffiti artists this month and banned them from Olympic venues in an apparent bid to prevent the Games becoming a target for subversive spray-painters.
“There’s a more widespread clean-up operation than normal, definitely,” street artist Mau Mau told AFP. “There’s loads of work disappearing from the tracksides by the railways.”
Mau Mau, who declined to give his real name, made his own Olympic offering to the city walls a few weeks ago: an overweight McDonalds clown, carrying a torch labeled “Coca-Cola” that was spewing out a thick plume of black smoke.
Both brands are official sponsors of the Games.
“I painted it to protest against the corporate takeover of the Olympics,” he explained.
Mau Mau created the west London mural with the permission of the wall’s owner, but it was whitewashed just six days later by the local council, which said it had received a complaint from a member of the public.
“It wasn’t offensive,” said Mau Mau. “It was just a picture of a fat clown.”
The artist believes he may have fallen foul of strict regulations designed to protect the Games’ corporate sponsors.
His mural clearly featured the Olympic rings, a symbol that can only be used with the approval of the International Olympic Committee.
With the rings emblazoned on his vest, Banksy’s javelin-thrower also breaks the rules, which could give Games officials additional cause to paint over it — if they can find it.
James Cochran, whose vivid mural of the world’s fastest man Usain Bolt beams over an east London car park, said he was careful to seek official approval before shaking the first aerosol can.
“They said, ‘By the way, don’t touch the Olympic rings — there’s very strict copyright control on that,’” he recalled.
“They’re getting a bit authoritarian,” the British-Australian artist told AFP. “The Olympic Committee have got to be careful that they don’t infringe on freedom of expression. Sometimes you think, ‘Jeez, Beijing was more open-minded.’”
The Games’ corporate sponsors, and the lengths to which organizers have gone to accommodate them, have become popular targets of Britain’s vibrant underground art scene, particularly near the Olympic Park in east London.
At Hackney Wick station on the edge of the park, someone scrawled the word “Shame” in huge letters over a mural commissioned by Coca-Cola, forcing the company to have the work painted over.
For Cochran, the Games are an opportunity to spread a more cheerful message. His image of Bolt, with brightly colored rays pulsing from his face in all directions, is his “homage to the buzz around the Olympics.”
“I love London, and I see this as an amazing and positive time for the city,” the 39-year-old said.
“When the Olympics are done and everyone’s gone home, it would be nice to have something that speaks about that time. But who knows if it will last? That’s the interesting thing about street art — anything can happen to it.”
March 24 to March 30 When Yang Bing-yi (楊秉彝) needed a name for his new cooking oil shop in 1958, he first thought of honoring his previous employer, Heng Tai Fung (恆泰豐). The owner, Wang Yi-fu (王伊夫), had taken care of him over the previous 10 years, shortly after the native of Shanxi Province arrived in Taiwan in 1948 as a penniless 21 year old. His oil supplier was called Din Mei (鼎美), so he simply combined the names. Over the next decade, Yang and his wife Lai Pen-mei (賴盆妹) built up a booming business delivering oil to shops and
Indigenous Truku doctor Yuci (Bokeh Kosang), who resents his father for forcing him to learn their traditional way of life, clashes head to head in this film with his younger brother Siring (Umin Boya), who just wants to live off the land like his ancestors did. Hunter Brothers (獵人兄弟) opens with Yuci as the man of the hour as the village celebrates him getting into medical school, but then his father (Nolay Piho) wakes the brothers up in the middle of the night to go hunting. Siring is eager, but Yuci isn’t. Their mother (Ibix Buyang) begs her husband to let
The Taipei Times last week reported that the Control Yuan said it had been “left with no choice” but to ask the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of the central government budget, which left it without a budget. Lost in the outrage over the cuts to defense and to the Constitutional Court were the cuts to the Control Yuan, whose operating budget was slashed by 96 percent. It is unable even to pay its utility bills, and in the press conference it convened on the issue, said that its department directors were paying out of pocket for gasoline
On March 13 President William Lai (賴清德) gave a national security speech noting the 20th year since the passing of China’s Anti-Secession Law (反分裂國家法) in March 2005 that laid the legal groundwork for an invasion of Taiwan. That law, and other subsequent ones, are merely political theater created by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to have something to point to so they can claim “we have to do it, it is the law.” The president’s speech was somber and said: “By its actions, China already satisfies the definition of a ‘foreign hostile force’ as provided in the Anti-Infiltration Act, which unlike
RSS