Banksy

As controversy spiraled this week over the decision by the British reality-TV celebrity and cancer victim Jade Goody to have her last days documented on camera, a smaller debate was bubbling over who created the mural of Goody that appeared in North London on Wednesday night, and what it meant.

The mural depicts Goody's head with a pound sign branded on it and vultures circling above with the words "This is England" accompanying it. The black and red coloring of the mural and the strong stencil style led some journalists to speculate that the work might be that of Banksy, the British graffiti artist whose pieces now sell for high prices at auction.

The mural "may be the proof that even renowned graffiti artist Banksy has a strong message about her plight," the British tabloid The Daily Mail wrote. "Clearly designed in the style of the artist, who is one of the art world's most famous names, it focuses on how her illness has turned into a huge money spinner."

The online blog for The London Paper, a popular free daily newspaper, agreed: "A stenciled mural that launches a stinging attack on the way Jade Goody's cancer battle has been treated by the media has got Londoners wondering whether it's a new Banksy or a Banksy-a-like."

The graffiti is not Banksy's, but that of a London stencil artist who said he prefers not to be named. He said he decided to create the mural on Wednesday night as a reaction to the media hype surrounding Goody's death.
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"It was quite rushed and spontaneous, because I wanted to do it when it was still fresh in people's minds," he said in a telephone interview Friday.

"But I think that there is a certain amount of ambiguity in the image. It is an attack on the media and what they have done to her, and an attack on her lack of dignity. But the vultures are not just the media, it is also us, I don't think we can just point a finger at the media; we read the articles - I think that we are as much to blame."

The artist said that he chose the wall in Kentish Town, in north London to do the stencil because in a sense it mirrored Goody's abrupt rise to celebrity status. "I chose the location because quite a lot of celebrities live around there, but it is also beside a council estate - so you get the contrast," he said. "But also because it's a wall I like the idea that it will linger in peoples' minds in a different way as the image starts to fade."

The artist also said that he liked using the medium of an anonymous graffiti work to portray the extreme level of self-branding that characterized Goody's rise to celebrity. "Everything's brandable - even the whole concept of graffiti, with Banksy - Jade Goody's become a piece of meat," he said.

The artist, who has not tagged his work, said that his name is "irrelevant" as it would lead to the same kind of branding that he is trying to satirize.

"If she ever had a soul then it's been completely lost," he said. "It's like a sort of horrible Grimm's Fairy Tale and it's reached it's climax."#

Source: IHT