Hunting in the Age of Consumption

‘We can’t do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.’

Created in 2006, Trolleys is one of Banksy’s most distilled visual statements, an image so simple it almost escapes notice, yet precise enough to linger. Released as a screenprint in the wake of his Los Angeles exhibition Barely Legal, the work captures a fundamental shift: survival has not disappeared, it has merely been redirected.

Introduction

The Scene: A Hunt Without Purpose

Three prehistoric figures move in formation from left to right, their bodies reduced to stark silhouettes. Each carries a spear, their posture unified, suggesting coordination, instinct, and intent. Ahead of them stand three supermarket shopping carts. Empty. Still. Slightly out of place, yet undeniably the focus of the pursuit. The contrast is immediate. On one side, organic movement and primitive tools. On the other, rigid metal structures: symbols of a system far removed from necessity. The composition is stripped to black and white, leaving no room for distraction, only confrontation.

What Are We Chasing?

Banksy constructs a collision rather than a narrative. The visual language borrows from textbook depictions of early human life: images designed to explain how we once survived. By inserting the shopping cart into this prehistoric setting, he folds time in on itself. The past is not replaced by the present; it is absorbed by it. The gesture recalls the appropriation strategies of Andy Warhol, yet where Pop Art often embraced neutrality, Banksy sharpens the blade. The object is not elevated: it is interrogated.

The figures do not hesitate. They know exactly what they are doing. That certainty is where the discomfort begins. Trolleys suggests that the instinct to hunt has not evolved: it has simply been reassigned. What once ensured survival now drives consumption. The collective effort remains, but its purpose has shifted from necessity to accumulation. And yet, the carts are empty. There is no reward waiting at the end of the pursuit, only the structure of the pursuit itself. The joke lands quietly, but it does not resolve.

Within Banksy’s body of work, Trolleys stands as one of his most controlled critiques. There is no spectacle, no shock tactic: only a quiet displacement that reveals more than it declares. It is not a condemnation as much as a recognition. The system is not imposed; it is pursued. The figures move forward together, focused, determined, unchanged. Only the object has evolved. The instinct remains intact: steady, efficient, and perhaps, entirely misplaced.