For years, art fans and journalists have been trying to figure out the identity of the Bristolian renegade and global phenomenon that is the street artist Banksy.
Now a new podcast, hosted by self-confessed superfan James Peak for BBC Radio 4, aims to understand the man behind the myth, who took graffiti from the underground to the high end art world.
Peak’s fascination with Banksy began when he moved to London’s East End around the year 2000. He soon became intrigued by “these little rats sprayed everywhere…. and more and more of Banksy’s street pieces just started to reveal themselves”.
But as with many Banksy fans, it wasn’t just the artwork itself – and its social commentary – that fascinated Peak. He was also drawn in by the artist’s mystique, and the huge effort involved in producing graffiti undercover at speed to avoid both being identified and arrested by the police.
“There’s a great line in his latest show which I think is something like: ‘Monet had light, Hockney had colour and I’ve got police response time,'” Peak says.
Over the years, various news outlets have reported that they know who Banksy is, and in 2017, DJ Goldie referred to Banksy as a man called Rob in an interview.
While rumours abound, his real identity has never been revealed. But have we gone beyond needing to know who he actually is?
Peak says Banksy’s anonymity “lets him keep doing the campaigning stuff he does unfettered” which, along with loyalty, probably stops the few in the know from letting the cat out of the bag.
“Being free to act in the way that he does, that’s super valuable.”
In fact, very few people who know Banksy have spoken publicly about him at all.
For the podcast, Peak spent a year getting to know gallerist Steph Warren, who worked with Banksy at his print house Pictures on Walls in Shoreditch in the early Noughties when she was in her early 20s.
Once Peak had gained her trust, Warren opened up to him about her experiences, having declined to sign a non-disclosure agreement when she worked at the print house. She has never talked publicly before.
So what was it like working with Banksy and his crew during those heady early days in a working-class area which would soon go on to become hipsterville?
“It was exciting,” Warren tells me.
“The office was very DIY, you know, very punk. When I started there I was the packing girl and I was licking the stamps to go on the tubes to send the prints out, then carting them down to Old Street post office. It was very exciting because it felt like I could be involved with helping it grow.”
