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Space Girl with Bird, 2003

BY

BANKSY
Space Girl with Bird, 2003
Spray-paint and household paint on steel
111.7 x 57.5 cm (44 x 22 5/8 inches)

 

Auction History
Christie’s London: 13 October 2007
Estimated: GBP 30,000 – 50,000
GBP 84,500

In this refined iteration of Space Girl with Bird, Banksy amplifies the contrast between innocence and dystopia. The childlike figure, bundled in a parka and sealed within a deep-sea-style helmet, holds a cartoonish bird, wide-eyed and fluttering, against a gritty gray background streaked with urban scrawl and pale pink hazard lines. It’s a poetic pause amid chaos: a moment of fragile grace suspended in a world that feels cold, metallic, and on the brink. While the first Space Girl appeared on rusted steel, this version feels even more clinical, as if painted inside a derelict bunker or lab. The pink lines bisecting the scene read like laser tripwires—boundaries the girl has already crossed. Is she a survivor? A dreamer? Or simply lost in a place where affection looks out of place? Banksy’s vision is less about answers than emotional tension—layered, ironic, and quietly heartbreaking.

Masked like the clandestine identity of the artist himself, the figure in Space Girl and Bird is a variation from Banksy‘s subversive theme of helmeted characters. The painting, spay-painted onto industrial sheet metal, is a study for one of the guerrilla artist’s very rare artistic and commercial commissions, which culminated in the cover art for the English rock band Blur’s Think Tank album, released in 2003.
 
Where the album cover depicted an embracing couple, estranged by their diving helmets in a reference to the shrouded lovers in Magritte’s Les Amants, the helmet enclosing the head of the life-sized child in Space Girl and Bird isolates her from her pet – and by extension, from nature in general. The image is closely related in its message of corrupted innocence to a work the artist stenciled in the streets of London of a similarly pony-tailed girl in a gas mask clutching a red flower, which she is unable to smell.
Blur, former art students themselves, sought to align themselves with Banksy because this celebrated graffiti artist, art terrorist and prankster’s often humorous images of discontent encapsulate and satirize the pervasive introversion and alienation current in contemporary British culture. Think Tank is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Blur, released in 5 May 2003. Continuing the jam-based studio constructions of the group’s previous album, the album expanded on the use of sampled rhythm loops and brooding, heavy electronic sounds. There are also heavy influences from dance music, hip hop, dub, jazz and African music. Recording sessions started in November 2001, taking place in London, Morocco and Devon to finish a year later.

Think Tank is a concept album about “love and politics”, associated with the widespread protests against the Iraq war notably. Anti-war themes are recurrent in the album as well as in associated artwork and promotional videos. After leaking onto the internet in March, Think Tank was released on 5 May 2003 and entered the UK Album Chart at number one, making it Blur‘s fifth consecutive studio album to reach the top spot. Think Tank also reached the top 20 in many other countries, including Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Norway and Japan. It was their highest charting album in the United States, reaching number 56 on the Billboard 200. The album produced three singles, which charted at number 5, number 18 and number 22 respectively on the UK Singles Chart.

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