Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Bye bye Banksy!
For a few days now I've suspected something was afoot with Turnpike Lane's Banksy; it's been surrounded by scaffolding and tarpaulin since Wednesday - and there was a security van present for much of that time.
This morning I had a sneaky look under said tarpaulin to find it had been removed. I spoke to the guy rendering the wall and he said that after repeated attempts to gouge it out, the owner of the Poundland building had decided to take steps to 'preserve' it. He wasn't sure where it's gone...one can only wonder if it's been sold. Sad to see it go - it was nice to have a landmark of sorts...
Tags for Forum Posts: banksy, street art
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by paddyk on
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good points and what about the lovely old victorian/edwardian pubs that have been destroyed like the queens head and the botany bay. once these places are gone theyre gone, no matter how much tarting up of green lanes is proposed ( never quite done though)
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Permalink Reply by Neville Collins on
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Am I the only one who doesn't give a stuff about this? So much overreaction over a mural!!!!! Never mind the fact that the borough is facing huge cuts in public services and the forthcoming changes in the benefit system will create an even bigger social crisis than we have at the moment. We need to refocus our attention on the real issues!!!!!
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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Actually unfair re betting shops. The council worked very hard within the limits of the planning laws to try and stem the tide but actually have no power in reality to prevent one opening with the law as it now stands. It would take a repeal of the Gambling Act to actually give them any power and a recent amendment to a planning bill to prevent clustering, proposed by David Lammy, was voted down by the assembled Coalition MPs including I believe the MP for Wood Green and Hornsey. Basically the law is on the side of the gambling industry and they have the money to pay for expensive representation at any hearing brought by the council.
I think there's a whiff of 'whataboutery' in the tailend of this thread. It is actually possible to care about schools, local heritage and the changes to the benefit system that are being implemented by the coalition government *and* about the loss of this. It is also equally valid not to care but there's really no need to bash the council for everything else just because you don't.
While I wasn't sure that Cllr Kober needed to get so excited given that she has a lot on her plate, Cllr Strickland's remit includes culture and he was responding not just to a local but a national outcry about the loss of this piece as part of that remit.
I had to laugh when I read the 'I blame the council' routine from the sellers. Did they ask for help? Did they inform the council of the problems and of their proposal? Did they offer to move it, say to Bruce Castle Museum, for "safe keeping"? How would they have responded if the council had demanded they remove it? Did these art lovers only get a pound for the picture (well it was at Poundland) or a few thousand perhaps? Does this statement have just a whiff of desperation about it? Better to have remained silent I would have thought and wait for the storm to blow over than come up with that.
Anyway let's not let this thread become a place to grind axes. There's plenty of other places on the site to do that. Leave this one for the art lovers, eh?
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Permalink Reply by Kamila on
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Very well said, Liz. You've summed up exactly what I've been thinking. While our council isn't always right, I too don't like this continual bashing, often of course from a local councillor with an axe to grind against the local Labour Party! I sometimes wonder whether other HoL members know this!! I also agree that Alan Strickland has worked hard on this campaign. I agree whole-heartedly that the Council can care about schools, local heritage and the changes to the benefit system AS WELL as the loss of this mural.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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If you're referring to my comments, Kamila, then most of them do identify me as a councillor. I don't have any axe to grind against the local Labour Party since I am a member of that party. But it's also the case that I'm not a glove puppet and prefer thinking for myself and expressing views with reason and passion. (And a bit of humour.) Rather than being told what to think and say and do by the party apparatchiks.
I also think that there's a question about what - among various pressing issues - a Council Leader chooses as priority. Cllr Alan Strickland, by the way, is the ward councillor for Noel Park (Wood Green) as well as having the "culture" remit.
Like everyone else - apart from our two millionaires, Robert Davies and Les Gilbert - I don't know how this little story will turn out. Maybe Rob & Les have stored Banksy's wall in a lock-up near Shopping City. And, as Liz suggests, will shortly decide to white-van it with grace and a good heart as a donation to Bruce Castle Museum.
Happy ending? Well sort of.
Because I'd like to add a point which I hope is new to this thread. (At least I can't remember it coming up.) Which is the "message" sent to street artists by the adulation of Banksy. My last visits to Berlin, New York and Venice were a long while ago. But I was dismayed by what seemed to me the widespread ugliness of graffiti. Is this what we want for Haringey and elsewhere in London?
A last point - not new but a glance at the past. John Berger's 1972 TV series "Ways of Seeing" is on YouTube. Berger acknowledges ideas he took from Walter Benjamin's 1936 Essay: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - which can be downloaded.
If you've never seen the 4-part series and are interested in issues about art, you may enjoy it. There's lots of John Berger on YouTube and at 87 he seems to have lost none of the warmth, sparkle, curiosity and eagerness to learn and share ideas from forty years ago.
In the first programme he suggests that the "mystery" of an original art object now depends on its monetary value. He describes how a "genuine" original painting becomes "a relic in a holy shrine". And that this "religiosity is a substitute for what paintings lost when the camera made them reproducible". Ring some bells in Whymark Avenue?
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor)
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Thanks for this. Very interesting. I will be sure to look up the John Berger series.
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Jessica, if you couldn't be bothered to follow every thread of deathless prose in this unputdownable 13-page turner, what right do you have to jump in to what is, one hopes, the final paragraph just to discover whodunnit or how or why? Whoever dunnit was clearly mad enough to be locked up.
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I would never waste time reading something that bores me. I've been guilty of skipping to the end of this thread myself and not following it word for word as it meanders its way to 11,113 views (probably a site record) but it really has run out of steam when the 'what about..." posts start.
Unless something totally dramatic happens of course, a final twist that we couldn't have foreseen...
Anyway plenty of other stories to read on the site or better still here's a chance to write your own
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I think the theme London Journey more than fits with the story of what you've achieved since moving to Harringay. The advice they tend to give when starting creative writing is 'write about what you know' Everyone has a story or two in them somewhere...
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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I don't know if it's a site record, but The Great Flapjack Scandal currently at more than 6,000+ views ahead, makes it 50% more popular than the Banksy brouhaha ...
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Neville, you're much too self-referential. Why do you think you might be the only one etc etc? Some of us got there with our outraged indignation ten or twelve days ago. Nevertheless, I shall defend with the last drop of my blood and even the last quid of my council tax our Dear Leader's right to set up and finance KOBRA - Klaire's Official Banksy Raid Alert. This too is a real issue towards which Haringey must bend its sharpest focus and its best energies, whatever the cost!!!!!
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