Banksy™ Clutch Bag
This fashion-forward accessory is made from a genuine real-life house brick and is perfect for the kind of person who doesn’t carry much but might need to whack someone in the face.
Probably no less practical than the output of most haute couture fashion houses.
Made from random bits of old handbag so yours may differ from the one pictured.
Signed.
Edition: 50
Release Price: GBP 750
Clutch Bag is made from an actual house brick made to look like a handbag. The object brings together the brick, the essential tool of the builder, rioter and burglar, with certain elements of a handbag, giving the former a more genteel quality in this witty combination.
When it was sold online, the GDP description suggested this kind of bag is “perfect for the kind of person who doesn’t carry much but might need to whack someone in the face.”
Yet again, with his typical humor and cynicism, Banksy merges urban art and vandalism with satire and art history to create a new visual language. To that extent, the artist references one of his earlier and iconic work entitled Love Is In The Air(Flower Thrower) in which a threatening man is shown in the act of throwing not a brick or Molotov cocktail, but a bouquet of flowers at an unseen target.
Love Is In The Air, 2003
Screen-print on paper
With the present work, made in 2019, the artist seems to have evolved from the pretty pacifism of his previous message to a more aggressive and yet complex symbol in the form of a brick.
Banksy also obviously takes a stab at the fashion industry with its large amounts of waste and exploitation involved in manufacturing methods, with the original description for the bag stating that the bag was “probably no less practical than the output of most haute couture fashion houses.’
