Who is Banksy?
I was having an interesting day thinking about bells, when it occurred to me who Banksy is.
It’s quite easy, but you will need to give me a little slack as it’s a bit of a convoluted story.
For context, Banksy is an anonymous artist who puts a lot of street art around the world, runs events and sells a lot of art. S/he is an industry, and nobody knows who or what it is.
You can always find a person who will talk to the highest bidder about how they ‘know Banksy’ or were ‘graffiti rivals’ back in the day (I transcribed one of these shows back at the start of my career), but still nobody is the wiser, and the mystery persists.
I could go and grab some more information about how much bank Banksy rakes in, but it’s not interesting information. This sentence, in and of itself is not an interesting sentence, but I suppose I’m now pulling some kind of ironic literary joke to gradually build suspense while you, the reader, wait to hear ‘who is Banksy’.
But I would never do such a thing.
To start, we need to have a trip to Oliver Twist, and think about the figure of Fagin. Here’s a guy that as soon as you step outside of the orphanage offers you a job. It’s not a glamourous job, but it’ll give you a stable income and a good set of friends. There’s a degree of danger, and it’s all a bit suspect, but beggars can’t be choosers and all that.
We then need to arise in your mind the image of the Artful Dodger, and what this character represents in the literary cannon. Or indeed, the collective psyche. To be an ‘Artful Dodger’, one needs to be very good at evading the law, and indeed we probably know a few ‘Artful Dodgers’ in our own lives.
Now that I’ve conjured these images in your mind, I need to take a detour to mid-2000s video gaming. Here we will find a video game called ‘The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion’, or Oblivion for short. Here you play the role of a prisoner who receives a very lucky break and can go on to fulfill all sorts of jobs, adventures, quests and/or prophecies. You can become a wretched murderer, a boring warrior, anything that tickles your fancy. A bit like life itself.
But what’s interesting in this particular game for this particular topic, is that while you’re wandering about the Imperial City, you will be able to find a flyer that tells you that ‘The Gray Fox’ is wanted by the police, with a picture of a masked man and a reward. 
So then it follows that if you ask around town (to the right people, at least) about the latest rumours, you’ll get to hear that there’s a Thieves Guild in operation. The police will deny it all day long, but they still go out patrolling at night like a collection of useful idiots.
Through the wonders of ‘plot’ and ‘narrative’, the player can end up joining the Thieves Guild, and go and rob lots of unsuspecting NPCs (that’s a non-playable character). It’s a lot of fun, and it all culminates in robbing the Imperial Palace of a very important document. It’s a lot of fun.
Your reward, at the end of it all, is that not only do you get to meet this Gray Fox character, you can become him. It turns out that the hat the Gray Fox wears is magic, and transforms whoever wears it into ‘The Gray Fox’. Your prize for becoming guild master of the Thieves Guild is that you get a turn at being The Gray Fox.
And this is all related to Banksy, because it should follow that Banksy is an icon that represents all of the ‘Artful Dodgers’ of our world, who skillfully evade ‘conventional employment’ and band together to annoy the law. One only needs to investigate ‘The Art of Banksy’, currently taking place in central London, to find Banksy – he’s there in every single person running the joint.
Also, as a final postscript, this was at Banksy’s Dismalland production back in the day – this was the production company:
Really makes you think, eh!?
Wow! Does make you think. Was Dismal Land really a Gray Fox production?
Iām not sure if I believe in Banksy anymore , or Father Christmas š
You know there is a street artist doing paintings on walls of bombed out buildings in Ukraine – could this be where Banksy is now ?