Back in May, word started spreading that famed “street” artist Banksy had left his mark in Toronto.  Having just released his film “Exit Through the Gift Shop”, he had been passing through a variety of cities including LA, New York and Toronto.  For those who don’t know, Banksy is a graffiti artist from Britain.  Probably best known for his stencil work, he regularly leaves his pieces on walls across the globe.  If you’re ever in a bookshop, check out this book.  It shows a good chunk of his work.  I’ve never been a big fan of his stencil work, but the book shows a bunch of other styles that are pretty creative.  There’s a section in the book that shows him altering existing pieces of art (like a shopping cart dumped in Monet’s lily pond) and sticking them up in galleries like MOMA and the Louvre.

Unlike many other graffiti artists, Banksy has been pretty successful in the “legitimate” art community. His pieces can easily go for 5, 6 and even 7 digits (customers include Brad and Angelina).

As news of his Toronto appearance spread, pictures of his work in Toronto surfaced on the web.  Unfortunately, most sites weren’t disclosing the specific locations at an attempt to salvage the work from vandals.  From the images we could find and with the help of some online hints, we were able to place a few of them and tracked them down.  Here’s what we found:

As you can see, these were tainted, but it was still pretty cool to track these down and see them in person.  The first picture above of the “Guard on Duty” was also found in LA a few weeks earlier.  Unfortunately, someone took the painting.  By take the painting, they came in, cut the wall out and removed the whole damn thing.