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Phone Tap, July 2011

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Phone Tap

 

 

Phone Tap

Date: July 2011
Location: Chrisp Street, East London, England
 
In July 2011, the British headlines was focused on various phones and voicemails being hacked by journalists.

 

The quirky Phone Tap mural can be found in a small car park on Chrisp Street in East London, just two minutes away from All Saints DLR station. It has been quite intact since 2011 even though there are some multicolored paint splatters around it. It’s one of the examples of how Banksy incorporates the natural urban environment into his murals – he depicts a phone ringing to an actual water tap on the street.

 

 

Next to it stands a stick figure with a baffled expression saying, “Oh no… my tap’s been phoned”. This stencil work is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Rupert Murdoch phone hacking scandal that was all over the media in the summer of 2011. It also engages with the theme of surveillance that is omnipresent throughout Banksy’s works, including prints such as Radar Rat from his famous Rat series released in 2004.

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