Heavy Weaponry (Multi-color Background), 2009

Presented in an artist’s frame, Heavy Weaponry (On Multi-Colored Background) is a striking example of Banksy’s satirical and socially charged compositions. Executed in 2009, it is closely related to another version that featured in his landmark exhibition Banksy vs the Bristol Museum that same year. Rendered in his instantly recognizable hand-cut stencil technique, the work depicts an elephant charging across the picture plane with a missile strapped to its back. Behind the animal, brightly colored stripes recall a television error screen. Capturing the anti-war sentiment that has fueled some of Banksy’s best-known images, the motif of the armed elephant has recurred throughout his practice. First depicted in spray paint on fiberboard in 1998—against a colorful barcode labelled ‘Heavy Weaponry’—it was reimagined on canvas in 2000, spray-painted onto weathered iron in 2001, and depicted over another work, titled Radar Rat, on cardboard in 2002. Replete with biting humor and dark irony, the present work offers a refinement of Banksy’s original spray-painted motif, returning for the first time to the colorful background introduced a decade earlier.