I was thinking to myself last night and... I reckon Banksy actually fed the media this false evidence.

Yes as if Banksy would really stop Drawing/painting/stenciling Just because of the media. If you love something that much you'll never sop doing it. And Banksy obviously loves to draw!

So you know Keith Chegwin too? coooooool

Tacky, cheap journalism. At the end the camera pans over an M-City piece and asks " Is this a Gunningham?" Fucking prat!

Do two negatives make a positive? Radar Magazine steps into the three ring Red Herringham circus with an anti-rumor rumor.

radaronline.com/exclusives/2008/07/banksy-robin-gunningham.php


"Is celebrated graffiti artist Banksy a 34-year-old Bristol, England, native named Robin Gunningham? The Daily Mail seems to think so, though Gunningham's parents denied even having a son. Gawker agrees, and has even dug up a second photo of the purported Banksy, which indeed bears some resemblance to the only other known picture of Banksy, taken in Jamaica in 2004. But the director of the gallery that put on Bansky's first-ever show in New York City swears it's not him. 'I'm not at liberty to say much, but what I can say is that Gunningham isn't Banksy,' Davide Centineo, the director of the Vanina Holasek gallery in Chelsea, tells Radar.

"Banksy's paintings in the exhibit all fetched six figures when they were shown in the gallery back in December 2007. Centineo says he 'collaborated on curating' the exhibit, but doesn't otherwise represent the artist. Reached for comment, he tells us that 'Gunningham's name has been floating around the Internet for a while, but I can tell you it's not correct.' Indeed, as Gawker noted, the second alleged photo of Gunningham, which includes his name in the subhead, has been online since 1999.

"Centineo could be participating in the smoke-and-mirrors game that has long shrouded Banksy's true identity, but it didn't seem like he was lying. (Another woman who says she was hit on by Banksy in 2007 also tells us that the man in the photo isn't Bansky.) It's also hard to imagine that Gunningham, if he's actually Banksy, would give away so much on Facebook after all the pains he's gone through to keep his identity a secret. Maybe Banksy is actually a collective of artists, as has been theorized? That could explain why some people deny that Gunningham is Banksy; it's possible that the 'Banksy' they dealt with wasn't him. Maybe we'll never know! We certainly have no idea. But perhaps it's better that way."

exactly

The Guardian: The Art Of Exposure

William Boyd
Saturday July 19, 2008

books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2291791,00.html


As Banksy spraygunned stencilled images on to an underpass wall in Shoreditch in the small hours of the morning, he knew that what he was really doing was taking one small step towards his eventual discovery. Inside every Banksy, a Robin Gunningham - if that is his real name, as the Mail on Sunday has claimed - is struggling to get out.

I think I know a little of the emotions Gunningham/Banksy must be feeling as he contemplates the new future ahead of him. I was involved in a minor art hoax that took place 10 years ago (and lasted about a week), when I published a small, beautifully produced, copiously illustrated monograph entitled Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960. Nat Tate was a creature of my imagination, entirely fictive: he had never existed, but we presented him to the world as if he had, throwing a large party at Jeff Koons's studio in Manhattan (on April 1), where the book was launched. David Bowie - the book's publisher - read some extracts to the crowded roomful of art-world cognoscenti and, to borrow Robert Hughes's term, other Varps (Vaguely Art-Related People). There was a lot of talk about Nat Tate and his short, sad, emblematic life. A British journalist wandered round the room taking notes, asking the credulous guests leading questions, hearing them reminisce and speculate about Nat.

Back in London another lavish party was being planned for the UK launch of the book. I did the usual round of interviews and photoshoots, telling the story of how I had discovered Nat Tate's existence, had researched his life, interviewed people who had known him - such as Gore Vidal and Picasso's biographer, John Richardson (co-conspirators, in fact). I showed the photographs of Nat and his family and friends that I had unearthed, the reproductions of the few drawings and paintings of Nat's oeuvre that had survived his wholesale destruction of his work before his suicide in 1960.

But hoaxer's angst had set in. Duplicity, pretence, obfuscation, covering tracks, ambiguities and evasions are all polite descriptions of "telling lies". For any hoax to work there has to be a great deal of convincing mendacity. Things had got out of hand - it had all got too big and high profile. And perhaps this is what had happened to Banksy - the diffident public-school dropout grafitti-ing walls in Bristol had turned into a ModBrit superstar making vast sums of money. The pressures must have been building incrementally as worldwide fame and curiosity grew.

Similarly with Nat Tate, though to a far lesser degree. What had begun as a whimsical notion I had suggested to Karen Wright, then editor of Modern Painters magazine - that I invent an artist - had turned into this New York-London media circus. My plans for the hoax had been modest: publish the book and see what happened. I imagined a slow burn of scepticism, resulting in a challenge to authenticate and subsequent amusement at the fiction I had concocted.

In the event, Nat Tate and I were outed by a Sunday newspaper (not the Mail) a couple of days before the London launch party. Relief all round, apologies delivered, egg swiftly removed from faces.

I felt defrauded myself, somehow: this was not how it was meant to happen - the hoax was not meant to detonate in this way. Someone else had lit the fuse and that irritated me, powerfully. I suspect Robin Gunningham (if he really is Banksy) is angry now, also - though his rage, because there is so much more at stake (will you want to hang a Gunningham on your wall?), could be mightier than mine was. But the anger is swiftly replaced with relief - no more lying, no more duplicity, no more furious second-guessing. I predict, curiously, that now Banksy has been identified as Robin Gunningham it will be the length of time he remained anonymous that will fascinate people. Ten years on from the Nat Tate hoax, Nat still lives on - there have been television documentaries made, articles written, interviews given. On my last visit to New York I was pleased to see my little monograph on the shelves of the Museum of Modern Art's bookshop, nestling innocently between two fat studies of Tàpies and Tiepolo. Banksy's downfall may well prove to be Robin Gunningham's apotheosis.

this comment seems random

Yeah, Laz.

so I thought I would wait. Robin Gunnigham would surely come forward and sell his story to a newspaper, I'm not Banksy, I work for 'insert every day company' I have 'insert average life' its crazy!!

Nothing, I think the mail got their man on this. I dont care, but credit where its due.

"It’s a pretty safe bet that the reality of me would be a crushing disappointment to a couple of 15-year-old kids out there." Banksy in Swindle magazine

Camilla Stacey blog entry about talking to the Mail:
madebymilla.blogspot.com/2008/07/banksy-and-me.html

Very very wise words