Banksy, who although like a latter-day Robin Hood remains officially anonymous, is a street artist who has become household name around the world, with a reach far beyond the Bristol underground scene from which he emerged in the early 1990s. In 2018, he memorably made headlines after one of his works appeared to self-destruct just after selling at auction in London for over a million pounds, playfully reinforcing the artist’s apparent disdain for the commercial structures of the art world. The elusive artist’s work, whether stencilled on a nondescript brick wall of a housing estate or screen-printed on archival paper, is instantly recognisable for its cutting social satire, whimsical popular culture references and subversive aphorisms. No Ball Games, 2009, is no exception. Expressing in a clear and concise vignette Banksy’s dismay in nanny-state restrictions on civil liberties, No Ball Games shows two children throwing in the air not a ball, but a street sign emblazoned with the warning ‘No Ball Games’. This witty substitution also highlights the optimistic inventiveness of children at play. Simplified into easily legible social cartoons, the figures in No Ball Games are archetypal in their lack of identifying features. They are all children, and thoroughly relatable in their innocent disregard for the rules.

This motif first appeared as a stencilled graffiti mural, one of Banksy’s largest, on the side of a shop at the junction of Tottenham High Road and Philip Lane in the North London borough of Tottenham in 2009. It was enjoyed here by locals for many years as a community landmark until being removed and sold in 2013, with the profits going to Step by Step, a charity for disabled children. Although Banksy’s graffiti is almost always site-specific and intended to be enjoyed by all, many of his works have been removed from walls and later sold at auction. The artist has sometimes responded to this phenomenon by creating additional artworks commenting on the events and creating screen-printed multiples of his most iconic stencils

Alongside his street art, since 2002, Banksy has found various ways of selling these screen-prints. At first sold through a gallery dealer Steve Lazarides, all sales and authentications of his prints since 2009 have been directed exclusively through a nebulous online entity the artist calls the ‘Pest Control Office’. As a means of controlling authentication and cataloguing, the Pest Control Office provides certificates of authenticity for each of Banksy’s official limited-edition prints. The certificate accompanying this example of No Ball Games confirms the identifying details of this specific print along with a stamp and a signature. It also includes a hand-numbered torn example of another Bansky artwork: the Di-Faced Tenner, a counterfeit £10 note from the Bansky of England, emblazoned with the face of Lady Diana.

LUCIE REEVES-SMITH