Banksy’s site, once again, show’s tribute to a lost graffiti comrade, this time, in respect to Russian counterpart, Pasha 183… Not long since the great, Nekst.

We all know the effect that Banksy has had on the world of street art and the fact that, arguably, as Bristol’s most famous export, his thought provoking images have touched all four corners of globe in one way or another.

It’s so cool, though, to see how he’s inspired graff-heads of a new generation in his hometown.

Here are some pretty sick pictures of murals and new pieces in and around Nelson Street, Easton, and many more spots in the area.

Props to stuff.co.nz and Getty Images/Matt Cardy for the cool shots.

A Russian graffiti artist known by the tag, Pasha P183, has died at the tender age of 29.

Hailed as the ‘russian Banksy’, Pasha 183, was recently commissioned to create the scenery for the musical, Todd, by the Teatralnoye Delo theatrical production company. Regina Vartsan, spokeswoman for the theatre company knew him as a ”sincere and open person of remarkable talent and unique vision.” We tend to agree.

One of Pasha 183′s most iconic pieces was on the ground of a snow-covered yard, featuring a huge pair of spectacles, with a lamp post serving as one arm. See below for a wicked aerial shot!

In a similar vein as the UK-based, Banksy, very little was known about the Pasha 183, who also carefully protected his identity. He described himself as an “anarchist” and spoke with contempt about the “constant run for money” in Moscow… there seems to be a pattern emerging.

We’re sure you’d agree that it’s another  huge loss to the graffiti scene and we hope you will join us in remembering him for his work whilst thanking him for his part in spreading messages of truth.

RIP, Pasha 183!

The return of Wood Green’s very own Banksy piece, “Slave Labour”, thanks to their street protests after the removal and attempted sale at a Miami auction, has sparked a deal for a community mural between Haringey Council and Wood Green Investments!

The Turnpike Art Group (TAG) will be creating the mural, as mentioned on the ThisIsLocalLondon website, although, we are unsure if it will be accompanying the returned Banksy piece or replacing it altogether…

Let us know if you hear anything! info@banksyt-shirts.com

Once again, we, at Banksy T-shirts, applaud up-and-comers but you can’t replicate the quality of Banksy’s stencil skills.

This piece was unveiled just in time for Easter near London Bridge (reported the Huffington Post) and, whilst the style and content is relatively similar, the quality just isn’t there and it’s fairly easy to dismiss it as an imitation.

We all know Banksy for his originality, cutting-edge imagery, and double entendre’s. It would be cool to see some new and exciting original work on the streets…

You just can’t replicate.

Now, don’t get me wrong… I mean, I couldn’t do it, but this, quite clearly, is not the work of our beloved Banksy!

This piece was was found on the fire door of the Brittle Bone Society in Dundee but was quickly accompanied by a statement on their website to say that “The work in the image provided is not by the artist known as Banksy” after photographs were sent to his Pest Control site, dedicated to establishing the legitimacy of such street art.

Having said that, we applaud the placement of the artwork, given the publicity shown to the charity during this “is it or isn’t it” episode as I’m sure that we would all agree that charities need and deserve to be in the public eye as much as possible.

Check out the current fundraising projects on the Brittle Bone Society website and leave a small donation of whatever you can afford, and, for top-notch Banksy T-shirts, you know where to go!

Well… there I was, in absolute awe of Banksy’s work, yet again, after finally finding my copy of Wall and Piece . It had been quite some time and I must have spent two hours or so looking at every single piece of art at least 3-4 times, from front-to-back, and back again. But how did I miss this?

As someone who is fascinated by anything to do with the World Wars, the thought of what this human race has inflicted on its fellow man, and those who fought to survive, I have read a fair few books and watched many a documentary on the History Channel, learning new things every time, and I still get a cold shiver during a poignant moment of reflection.

The manifesto below is taken from Banksy’s Wall and Piece and is an extract from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO, one of the first to witness the unadulterated horror of Bergen-Belsen.

With these words, and Banksy’s artistic touch, I challenge anyone who says that it’s not deeply moving.

Manifesto
Extract from the diary of Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin DSO who was amongst the first British soldiers to arrive at the Nazi death camp Bergen-Belsen. It was liberated in April 1945 close to the end of the second World War.

I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen.

It took a little time to get used to seeing men and women and children collapse as you walked past them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diphtheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference.

Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand proping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentery which was scouring their bowls, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated.

It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for those internees than the lipstick.

Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.

Banksy T-shirts has got a few new t-shirts coming over the coming days. This is the first using Banksy’s thought provoking image ‘I Want Change’.

You can win one today by entering Free T-shirt Friday via Twitter. All you have to do is RT today’s competition message!

Check it here!

What other t-shirts would you like Banksy T-shirts to produce? What are your favourite Banksy images?

I don’t think I can even try and begin to tell you how happy I was to have finally found my long-lost copy

of Banksy’s, Wall and Piece, today… especially given the arctic freeze that’s hit parts of London and the South East this week, leaving me with no choice but to get my head down and work… harder than usual, of course!

With all of the most popular prints and photographs of his work plastered (see what I did there?)  all over the internet , it’s easy to forget about the, maybe, lesser-known, but still highly effective and thought-provoking images that Banksy has given us. Not only that, but it’s so cool to hear from the man himself with his thoughts on those that challenge the concept of street art and the fact that, you should not be afraid to speak your mind, whatever the subject may be.

I have just spent a good hour or so in awe (even moreso) of our beloved Banksy and I fully intend to spend at least one more today going back through to read it from cover to cover.

If you’re a Banksy fan, or just a general graffiti-lover, you NEED this book in your life!

Have you already got Wall and Piece?

Hit us back with your thoughts on it and if you’ve seen an image in there that you think might look good on a T-shirt then just shout! info@banksyt-shirts.com

Some wicked new graffiti is popping up all over the World in tribute to the late, great, Nekst, who passed away just before Christmas.

Here are ten of our favourites, including a pretty cool tattoo tribute, and one that I saw myself down in Brighton the other day.  It looked amazing! Would love to find out who did it…

Shout to Juxtapoz for their original post with some more cool images.

Have you seen one that we may have missed? Send it in to us at info@banksyt-shirts.com and, if we feature it, you could win a Bansky T-shirt!

The Sun newspaper reported a follow-up article on Saturday, 2nd March 2013, about the recent attempted sale of one of Banksy’s most

iconic pieces, Slave Labour, and, whilst that was a triumph for the residents of Wood Green, London, and the graffiti World as a whole (the piece was withdrawn from auction in the dying seconds!), it’s a massive shame to see other Banksy pieces in such a state.

After time, you would obviously expect things to fade out a little but we, here, at Banksy T-shirts think that the images of, quite possibly, our tiny island’s, all-time, most prolific and talented street artist should be as well-preserved by those in power as possible!

Yes, it is graffiti, but it’s graffiti with a message, depicting the sign of our times. Anyone who’s anyone can relate to at least one piece! This artwork that should be treasured for generations to come and almost protected from any vandalism.

Don’t get us wrong, it’s great that aspiring graff heads want to get in on the action but it’s not good to see the blatant disrespect on some of the older pieces. Check out the full article from The Sun here. Some great shots.

Maybe, if we shout loud enough, the man himself would go back and do a referb on a couple?

This month’s “Pin It 2 Win It!” competition is now LIVE!

You could be in with a chance of winning a FREE item from the Banksy T-Shirts catalogue. All you need to do is Repin one of the items pinned on this board that you would like to win and the winner will be chosen at random (through random.org) on the 28th of each month.

Winners will be announced on our social networks and our Banksy Blog.

Once again, congratulations to our first winner, Catherine Warburton… “Chuffed to bits, many thanks & regards”

Take a look and get pinning!

Announcing the very first winner of our new monthly “Pin It 2 Win It” competiton…

Congratulations to Catherine Warburton!

You have won the T-shirt that you repinned to your board, “I want”

Please email info@banksyt-shirts.com with your details and we’ll get it sent out to you asap!

If anyone else fancies winning one of their favourite T-shirts from the Banksy T-shirts range, all you need to do is follow our Pin It 2 Win It board on Pinterest and repin your favourite design to one of your boards.

The lucky winner is announced on the 28th of each month.

We are still running our weekly Free T-shirt Friday‘s on Twitter though so check that out too… @BanksyTshirts.

Once again, well done to Catherine! Get in touch and we’ll post you your T-shirt.

From the world-renowned stencil and graffiti art of Banksy to the humble street artists of NYC… this dude has got some serious skills!

It takes a while to take shape but the end result is pretty incredible! Watch the full video here.

Does anyone know his name?

Following on from our post the other day, Save the Banksy mural, about how proud we were to see the residents of Wood Green, North London, up in arms about the seemingly imminent sale of their very own “Slave Labour” image, Banksy T-shirts are over the moon to hear that, in the dying minutes, the iconic piece was withdrawn from a US auction!

BBC News reports on this fantastic development!

So great to see that Banksy’s artwork is supported by fans, both young and old, to the  point where they will protest in the streets, demanding to get it back where it belongs.

The company that owns the property where the artwork was stolen from, Woodgreen Investments, has declined to comment…

It’s made us feel all warm inside.

Even we were shocked to read that our beloved Banksy had been arrested by the City of London Police and that his identity had been blown, with the name, Paul William Horner, a 39-year old male born in Bristol, England, having been released to the press…

It was reported that London Police Chief Wayne Leppard had held a press conference on the apparent apprehension of the much-loved street artist.

“We had a 24-hour Anti-Graffiti Task Force monitoringdifferent groups known to have associated with Banksy. We received word that around 2am a group of individuals left a flat speculated to be one of Banky’s art studios. This group was followed by agents and once vandalism had occurred, we then arrested the group, 5 men total. These individuals all had ID on them except for one, and that is the one we believed to be Banksy,” Leppard said, allegedly.

“We then raided the studio where this group was last seen leaving from. Inside we found thousands of dollars of counterfeit money along with future projects of vandalism. We also found a passport and ID of a Paul William Horner who matched the description of the man that we are currently holding.” Leppard continued, “Horner is currently being held without bail on charges of vandalism, conspiracy, racketeering and counterfeiting. We are also holding the other four individuals whose names we are not releasing at this time.”

Fear not though, graffiti-lovers, as it appears that it was all a hoax!

According to The Business Insider, London’s Metropolitan Police have confirmed that the Banksy is still safely under cover, pointing out that, even though the BBC had been mentioned as also reporting the alleged arrest, it was nowhere to be seen on their website… Happy Days!

Long-live Banksy! 

The Banksy site is currently paying tribute to NEKST, the prolific street artist, who began his tagging life in the mid 90′s, in Houston, before joining the big-league in New York.

Voted as the Best Graffiti Artist by the Houston Press back in 2003, NEKST (then known as Next), was, arguably, one of the hardest hitting, raw graffiti writers in the game.

As you would expect from a graffiti artist, trying to keep his head down, there’s not much in the way of biographical info to take reference from but, GONZO, a friend of almost two decades, talks of his work…

“Through the years, he inspired a lot of people and gained the respect of a lot of graffiti artists.”  ”He used to write in this crazy silver and black wildstyle before moving onto these bigger and bigger projects,”

“He wouldn’t just climb a billboard and tag it, he’d cover the whole thing,” GONZO says. ”It’s that kind of work that made him so well-known among graffiti artists.”

Graffiti writers gathered at a memorial site in Houston to re-create their own versions of a NEKST piece at the beginning of last month. The location of the dedication project is yet to be announced (we think – let us know if you hear of anything!) but we’re sure it will be a fitting tribute.

Check out some of his work…

It’s so refreshing to hear that the people of London are actually standing up for something and looking to hold on to it with both hands!

An article posted on the BBC News website yesterday talks of a London council asking for help in the prevention of the US sale of a Banksy mural taken from a wall in its borough.

The artwork in question is Banksy’s  ”Slave Labour” image, recently removed from Whymark Avenue in Wood Green, North London. Much loved by the locals, it’s been described as “a real shame” that it’s to be sold.

We think so too! Why can’t it just be left where it was intended?

Maybe we should get a petition going… what do you guys think?