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Banksy's lesser-known works on show in London

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Pauline Froissart, Agence France-Presse

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2018/entertainment/07/12/20180712-banksy-afp.jpg?ext=.jpg"/><figcaption>A gallery assistant poses with &#x27;Media&#x27; 2006 artwork by Banksy at Lazinc Gallery in London. Tolga Akmen, AFP</figcaption></figure></div>LONDON -- Street artist Banksy is known around the world for his simple graffiti stencils, often with a sharp political point, but a new London exhibition is an opportunity to discover his wider talents.The mysterious British artist from Bristol, southwest England, made his name with clandestine street murals but has also produced a treasure trove of other kinds of images as the value of his work soared.&quot;You&#x27;ve got quite a few different styles here, you&#x27;ve got everything from the stencils to the paintings to the crude oils,&quot; said Steve Lazarides, co-founder of the Lazinc gallery where the show opens on Thursday.It includes classics such as &quot;Girl with Balloon,&quot; a black and white image of a little girl letting go of a red heart-shaped balloon, and &quot;Flower Thrower,&quot; depicting a masked protester ready to throw a bunch of posies.But there are also lesser known works such as the oil painting &quot;Sunflowers from Petrol Station&quot; depicting Van Gogh&#x27;s Sunflowers withered in a vase.None of the framed pictures in &quot;Banksy, Greatest Hits: 2002-2008&quot; were made on the street -- all were made to be sold and are on loan from private collectors.The show examines a prolific period when Banksy organised some of his most significant shows such as Crude Oil, Barely Legal, and Turf War.<div>More and more political</div>Lazarides met Banksy, whose identity remains a mystery, in 1997 when he said he noticed his &quot;visceral energy,&quot; and became first his photographer and then his gallerist.&quot;At this time he was free, he didn&#x27;t have the kind of expectations he has now. He was just painting for fun,&quot; he recalled in an interview with AFP.Over the years, the value of Banksy&#x27;s art exploded and he began producing paintings and limited edition prints, which allowed him &quot;to do more and more elaborate street operations.&quot;In 2008, a collaboration with Damien Hirst, &quot;Keep It Spotless&quot;, was sold at auction at Sotheby&#x27;s in New York $1.8 million.Pointing to an oil painting parodying Monet&#x27;s water lilies, 2005&#x27;s &quot;Show Me the Monet,&quot; Lazarides remarked: &quot;That painting would have been £15,000 pounds when we sold it. &quot;The client now wants to sell it for [almost] £5 million.&quot;The artworks can be bought by visitors to the gallery, but Lazarides warns that there is very little under £500,000.He believes Banksy has become one of the most popular contemporary artists because &quot;he doesn&#x27;t make people feel scared.&quot;&quot;He popularized art among the general public and suddenly it was OK to say that you like art and you didn&#x27;t need an art history degree to understand it,&quot; he said.He said Banksy had become &quot;more and more political&quot; over the years, for example in recent works in Paris where he took aim at the French government&#x27;s hard line on migrants.His anonymity has given him something of a mythical status, which Lazarides feeds, saying: &quot;It could be a team, it could be twins, a woman, who knows?&quot;<div>© Agence France-Presse</div>

Street artist Banksy is known around the world for his simple graffiti stencils, often with a sharp political point, but a new London exhibition is an opportunity to discover his wider talents.

Street artist Banksy is known around the world for his simple graffiti stencils, often with a sharp political point, but a new London exhibition is an opportunity to discover his wider talents.

Banksy's lesser-known works on show in London

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Banksy's lesser-known works on show in London

Pauline Froissart,

Agence France-Presse

Published July 12, 2018 02:10 PM PHT

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Banksy

art

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Lazinc Gallery

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