Banksy’s Pet shop & Charcoal Grill – 08/10/08 – NYC

Free the dolphin!

Watch this clip and you might get something that a lot of people seem to miss when it comes to Banksy. For all his political agit-prop there is more than a healthy dose of the typical British piss-taker. He is having a laugh.

(We’re not suggesting that is Banksy himself actually having a laugh on the video, but it is funny.)

Banksy’s observation: “New Yorkers don’t care about art, they care about pets. So I’m exhibiting them instead” formed part of the catalyst for him to question our weird relationships with animals. 

So began a mind game of reasonably epic proportions. Managing to establish a fake petshop on a busy New York street almost completely in secret, Banksy tricked residents to the extent that some complained of the poor conditions in which the animals were being kept. Of course, none of the animals were real. 

More a piece of street theatre than an art gallery, the shop features fornicating hot-dogs and Marty, the fantastic shop keeper who stayed in ‘whacked out’ character the whole time in spite of reporters attempts to elicit straight answers from him.

After witnessing the scene, one feels the urge to say something like…The ‘kinetic sculptures’ within the cages starkly illustrated our desolate alientaion from the natural world and our psychoticly erratic relationships with our fellow animals. Or not.

Perhaps it all went to show us up for our blown up sense of GRAVITAS when it comes to ‘ISSUES’. The ISSUE of animal cruelty is actually being lampooned because, why are we worried about battery chickens if we can’t even feed each other?