Urban Graffiti Artist Banksy Opens a Pet Shop

Was there going to be some guy in a ski mask selling rats and cuddly rabbits, or was he just cutting the ribbon at an opening ceremony and would his anonymous cover be blown?

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I needn’t have worried. It turned out to be his first official exhibition in New York, at The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill, in Manhattan.

The well known Graffiti artist who now sells his studio works for hundreds of thousands of dollars, to people such as Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Dennis Hopper, described the fake pet shop as being about "our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming".

The works in his exhibition are all three dimensional animatronics, and can be seen through the windows of the store.

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Stephen Adams, Arts Correspondent for the Telegraph describes some of the exhibits. One of them entitled “two chicken nuggets” ,as “two bite-sized ready-to-eat pieces peck at a single-serving carton of tomato ketchup, watched over by their mother hen.

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A second installation in the series shows what appears to be a leopard resting on a branch in a zoo enclosure, which turns out on closer inspection to be a fur coat.

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Another sees two fish fingers (fish sticks) swimming gently around in a goldfish bowl.”

In a statement about the exhibition Banksy said: “New Yorkers don’t care about art, they care about pets. So I’m exhibiting them instead. I wanted to make art that questioned our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming, but it ended up as chicken nuggets singing.

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I took all the money I made exploiting an animal in my last show and used it to fund a new show about the exploitation of animals. If its art and you can see it from the street, I guess it could still be considered street art."

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The New York Times said: "Banksy's statements, like much of his pranksterish oeuvre, should be taken with a grain of salt. But there's no denying the show's attention to comically pointed detail."

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Links to associated articles:

Urban Graffiti as Art: Banksy

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