Saving Banksy |

This Friday, Lonely Planet will release ‘Street Art’, a guide to street art featuring 140 street art hotspots in 42 cities around the world.

To mark the launch of Street Art, the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol will host a weekend of street art-inspired events, including the UK premiere of Saving Banksy.

‘Arnolfini X Future Tense’ will take place on Friday 14 and Saturday 15 April, and also includes street art tours, a book signing with author Ed Bartlett and a live panel talk featuring renowned street artists Ben Eine and Blek le Rat and Film Director Colin Day .

From Banksy’s stencils and Invader’s mosaics to amazing murals, this insider’s guide, compiled by independent curator & founder of The Future Tense Ed Bartlett, with a foreword by graffiti artist Remi Rough, provides stunning images along with practical details and maps of where to find secret stashes of street art, and introduces key artists, locations as well as festivals like Nuart (NO), Upfest (UK) or Mural (CA).

“This book is intended as a starting point to your journey,” Ed Bartlett mentions, “highlighting a selection of some of the key cities around the world to experience street art today, and providing guides to each city’s street-art hotspots to enable you to explore further. We’ve also included insights from some of its most important figures.”

Get a copy of the LONELY PLANET ‘Street Art’ book here
For SAVING BANKSY Screening bookings in Bristol visit the Arnolfini’s website

‘Saving Banksy’ is a documentary following art collector Brian Greif who removed a stencilled Rat by Banksy from the side of Red Victorian, a building located in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. His initial intention to preserve and donate the rat to a museum for the public proved unsuccessful (because no museum would accept graffiti as art). However this triggered interest from art dealers and auction houses…

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Though Banksy’s street work is deemed illegal by authorities, and will not be authenticated by Pest Control, his works have been removed by art dealers and re-sold at auctions for hundreds of thousands of dollars, while the artist himself receives nothing.

Directed by Colin Day and narrated by Paul Polycarpou, the film features interviews with renowned street artists from all across the globe including Ben Eine, Risk, Revok, Niels Mueman, Blek Le Rat, Anthony Lister, Doze Green, Hera and Glen E Friedman.

Some quotes from the interviewed artists:

Ben Eine: “Right now, today, I wouldn’t want one of my paintings preserved. In a hundred years time, when I’m dead, and none of them exist, I would love to have one of my paintings preserved. It’s a double-edge sword.”

RISK: “You can love my stuff, you can hate my stuff, you can steal my stuff . . . but give me the right to decide what I wanna sell or not sell.”

Doze Green: “It’s selfish to take something down that was put there for the public to love . . . or hate, but it was meant for the public.”

The documentary raises awareness about the complex political, legal situation, and question of ownership of art left in the streets.

The film premiered at the Nashville Festival earlier in April and will be released this autumn. More info on savingbanksy.com