The Alfalfa Banksy

This was the Banksy I knew (on the right; Melbourne’s is on the left). I saw it every day and then one day it was gone, Marrickville Council workers cleaning up graffiti had removed Banksy’s ‘child-pearl diver helmet’.

Sometimes, as in Afghanistan, we sob over art more than life.

I photographed this Banksy on the wall of the Prince Albert pub in Trafalgar Street, Brighton (a copy, the original had just been spirited away to the USA) . Public art is always/often controversial, often boring, having got through by committee, but this was spellbinding

Banksy’s Kissing Coppers has just been sold in Miami for $575,000. The appetite of capitalism for commodification of everything, except poetry, is awe-inspiring and depressing.