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Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the United Kingdom. Primarily based at "The Doughnut" in the suburbs of Cheltenham, GCHQ is the responsibility of the country's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, but it is not a part of the Foreign Office and its Director ranks as a Permanent Secretary.
Cheltenham is a spa town and borough on the edge of the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort following the discovery of mineral springs in 1716, and claims to be the most complete Regency town in Britain.
Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based street artist, political activist, and film director whose real name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation. Active since the 1990s, his satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. His works of political and social commentary have appeared on streets, walls, and bridges throughout the world. His work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. Banksy says that he was inspired by 3D, a graffiti artist and founding member of the musical group Massive Attack.
Gareth Wyn Williams was a Welsh mathematician and Junior Analyst for GCHQ on secondment to the Secret Intelligence Service who was found dead in suspicious circumstances in Pimlico, London, on 23 August 2010, at a flat used to house Security Service's staff. The inquest found that his death was "unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated." A subsequent Metropolitan Police re-investigation concluded that Williams's death was "probably an accident".
King Robbo was an English underground graffiti artist. His feud with the artist Banksy was the subject of a Channel 4 television documentary called Graffiti Wars, first shown in August 2011.
Slave Labour is a mural that was painted by a British graffiti artist, Banksy, on the side wall of a Poundland store in Wood Green, London in May 2012. The artwork is 48 inches (122 cm) high by 60 inches (152 cm) wide, and depicts an urchin child at a sewing machine assembling a bunting of Union Jack patches. The work was a protest against the use of sweatshops to manufacture Diamond Jubilee and London Olympics memorabilia in 2012.
The Doughnut is the nickname given to the headquarters of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British cryptography and intelligence agency. It is located on a 71 hectares site in Benhall, in the suburbs of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, in South West England. The Doughnut accommodates 5,500 employees; GCHQ is the largest single employer in Gloucestershire. Built to modernise and consolidate GCHQ's multiple buildings in Cheltenham, the Doughnut was completed in 2003, with GCHQ staff moving in the same year, and fully moved into the building in 2004. It is the largest building constructed for secret intelligence operations outside the United States.
Ben Moore is a British art curator, entrepreneur and artist. He is the founder and curator of Art Below, a contemporary art organisation that places art in public spaces and has had shows in England, Germany, Japan and the United States. He is also the founder and curator of Art Wars, an exhibition of designs based on the Imperial Stormtrooper helmets from Star Wars. In 2021, Moore was part of the Art Wars NFT project which resulted in massive losses for the purchasers of the NFTs and claims of copyright theft from artists whose physical work was reproduced without their permission.
Robin Barton is a British art dealer dealing primarily with Banksy's. Barton studied photography and graphic design at the Exeter College of Art and Design and this was his first encounter with Russell Young. Moving to London in 1980 he began working as a freelance photographer for music and fashion publications Sounds, NME, Blitz, The Face moving on to working regularly for pioneering Independent Magazine photographing amongst others Alec Guinness, Oliver Reed, Johnny Depp, Lou Reed, Hugh Grant and Sir Peter Hall. Later he worked for other publications Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Elle, Vogue, Tatler and Blueprint.
Art Buff is a graffiti artwork by Banksy which was created in Folkestone in 2014, Banksy announcing it as "part of the Folkestone triennial. Kind of". The work depicts a woman wearing headphones and staring at a plinth, upon which rests a patch of painted-out graffiti. The name of the piece is a play on words, "buff" being a slang term for the painting over of graffiti.
153–159 Fairview Road is a terrace of four houses in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, on the south side of Fairview Road beside the roundabout at its junction with Hewlett Road. The terrace became a Grade II listed building in 1972. The street artist Banksy produced an artwork, Spy Booth, on either side of a public telephone booth adjacent to the gable end of number 159 in April 2014. The work was destroyed in August 2016.
The Mild Mild West is a 1999 mural by graffiti artist Banksy, sited on No. 80 Stokes Croft, Bristol. It depicts a teddy bear throwing a Molotov cocktail at three riot police.
Girl with Balloon is a series of stencil murals around London by the graffiti artist Banksy, started in 2002. They depict a young girl with her hand extended toward a red heart-shaped balloon carried away by the wind. The locations for this work include street murals in Shoreditch and the South bank in London on the Waterloo Bridge and other murals were around London, though none remain there.
Forgive Us Our Trespassing is a piece by graffiti artist Banksy depicting a kneeling boy with a spray-painted halo. The image can be found on a wall in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2010, the image was distributed in the form of posters to promote the artist's film Exit Through the Gift Shop.
Well Hung Lover, also called Naked Man Hanging From Window and simply Naked Man, is a mural by the anonymous street artist Banksy, on a wall in Frogmore Street, Bristol, England.
A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that is recorded on a blockchain and is used to certify ownership and authenticity. It cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the blockchain and can be transferred by the owner, allowing NFTs to be sold and traded. NFTs can be created by anybody and require few or no coding skills to create. NFTs typically contain references to digital files such as artworks, photos, videos, and audio. Because NFTs are uniquely identifiable, they differ from cryptocurrencies, which are fungible.
Banksus Militus Ratus is a piece of artwork by British artist Banksy. The piece consists of a stuffed rat with a spray can in a glass-fronted box. Banksy first exhibited the piece in 2004 in the foyer of London's Natural History Museum, without the museum's consent.
Show Me the Monet is a 2005 oil on canvas painting by graffiti artist Banksy. The work is an appropriation of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies series. Banksy has appropriated Monet’s paintings to now depict a traffic cone and two shopping carts polluting and submerging into Monet's pond at Giverny. The work is believed to be a commentary on the negative impacts of capitalism and consumerism within society. Show Me the Monet exists within Banksy’s Crude Oil series. The work was sold in October 2020 by Sotheby’s. The work was sold for £7.5 million.
References
- ↑ "Fears Banksy Cheltenham 'spies' artwork will be removed". BBC News Online. 26 June 2014. Retrieved 26 June 2014.
- ↑ Steven Morris (10 June 2014). "Banksy confirms he is creator of Spy Booth wall art near GCHQ". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 June 2014.
- ↑ "Cheltenham Banksy: Deal to save it 'close to agreement'". BBC News Online. 29 June 2014. Retrieved 29 June 2014.
- ↑ "Banksy artwork removed from Cheltenham house". BBC News. 21 August 2016.
- ↑ Smith, Hannah (1 October 2021). "Banksy's "Destroyed" Spy Booth Auctioned as NFT". Art Business News. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
- ↑ "Banksy's Spy Booth Brick + NFT Auction Crashes Servers with Overwhelmingly Heavy Web Traffic". 4StateNews. 5 October 2021. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
- ↑ "Bid on the actual bricks and NFT". Banksy Spy Booth NFT. 11 September 2021. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
- ↑ "Thought Lost, Banksy's "Spy Booth" Returns ... As Bricks". InsideHook. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
- ↑ "What we do". GCHQ . 15 March 2015. Archived from the original on 29 April 2015. Retrieved 15 March 2015.
