Description

Banksy Princess Di-Faced Tenner

Offset lithograph banknote of the famous Di-Face Tenner

✓ Size : 7,6 x 14,4 cm (3 x 5 4/5 inch)

✓ Comes with a Certificate of Authenticity by The Dope Gallery

✓ Has been inserted in flawless Acryl display to protect the note

✓ Excellent Condition

If you want one, here it is !

In 2004, the British street artist and perennial prankster Banksy printed £1 million worth of his Di-Faced Tenner bills. A riff on a “defaced” tenner bill,

Banksy’s Di-Faced Tenner replaces an image of Queen Elizabeth II with that of the late Lady Diana, issued by the “Banksy of England.” Featuring

Charles Darwin on the reverse, the bill also proclaims: “Trust no one.” Banksy has rained the bills down on crowds of people at the Notting Hill and

Reading Festivals, and “spilled” a briefcase full of the bills at the Liverpool tube station in London at rush hour.

So the Di-faced Tenner was created for a public stunt Banksy had orchestrated that involved dropping a suitcase full of the fake currency in public.

But later that year, an unknown amount of Tenners were also released at the exhibition preview of Santa’s Ghetto, held at Lazarides Gallery (Steve

Lazarides is the former Banksy agent). Based on that Di-Faced Tenner, a lithograph has been created and these prints on thicker paper were

released early 2005 by Steve Lazarides and sold by him and the Dope Gallery.

In addition to its fascinating history as an unperformed public stunt, the Di-faced Tenner had the honor of being Banksy’s first piece of art to enter in

the British Museum private collection in 2019.

Unfortunately, because the Di-faced Tenner has been one of Banksy’s most popular and widely circulated images, the piece is often counterfeited.

Methods of identifying counterfeits have been debated, and there have rarely been occasions where pieces could be proven as 100% real…until

now!

Each Tenner that we sourced comes with a hand-signed letter of provenance from Steve Lazarides himself or the Dope Company, personally

guaranteeing the authenticity of each piece.

About Dope! Gallery

Nicolas Alyès launched Dope! Gallery in April 2013 with the goal of building a young and fresh Gallery that will be dedicated to the online

contemporary & urban art market and will promote offline events.

Dope! keeps an online shop updated where collectors can find originals, prints and limited editions of all sorts from well-known names in street and

contemporary art (Kaws, Banksy, Space Invader, Obey, Takashi Murakami, Daniel Arsham, Keith Haring Haring and many more)

Information on Banksy

Banksy is an anonymous England-based street artist, vandal, political activist, and film director, active since the 1990s. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. His works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges throughout the world. Banksy’s work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. Banksy says that he was inspired by 3D, a graffiti artist and founding member of the musical group Massive Attack.

Banksy displays his art on publicly visible surfaces such as walls and self-built physical prop pieces. Banksy no longer sells photographs or reproductions of his street graffiti, but his public “installations” are regularly resold, often even by removing the wall they were painted on. A small number of Banksy’s works are officially, non-publicly, sold through Pest Control. Banksy’s documentary film Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) made its debut at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. In January 2011, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for the film. In 2014, he was awarded Person of the Year at the 2014 Webby Awards.

Because of the secretive nature of Banksy’s work and identity, it is uncertain what techniques he uses to generate the images in the stencils, though it is assumed he uses computers for some images due to the photographic quality of much of his work. He mentions in his book Wall and Piece that as he was starting to do graffiti, he was always either caught or could never finish the art in one sitting. He claims he changed to stencilling while hiding from the police under a rubbish lorry, when he noticed the stencilled serial number. He then devised a series of intricate stencils to minimise time and overlapping of the colour.

There exists a debate about the influence behind his work. Some critics claim Banksy was influenced by musician and graffiti artist 3D. Another source credits the artist’s work to resemble that of French graffiti artist Blek le Rat. It is said that Banksy was inspired by their use of stencils, later taking this visual style and transforming it through modern political and social pieces.

Banksy’s stencils feature striking and humorous images occasionally combined with slogans. The message is usually anti-war, anti-capitalist or anti-establishment. Subjects often include rats, apes, policemen, soldiers, children, and the elderly.

In the broader art world, stencils are traditionally hand drawn or printed onto sheets of acetate or card, before being cut out by hand. This technique allows artists to paint quickly to protect their anonymity. There is dispute in the street art world over the legitimacy of stencils, with many artists criticising their use as “cheating”.

In 2018, Banksy created a piece live, as it was being auctioned. The piece, titled, Love is in the Bin, was originally the painting, Girl with Balloon, before it was shredded at Sotheby’s. While the bidding was going on, a shredder was activated from within the frame, and the piece was partially shredded, thus creating a new piece.

Banksy once characterised graffiti as a form of underclass “revenge”, or guerrilla warfare that allows an individual to snatch away power, territory and glory from a bigger and better equipped enemy. Banksy sees a social class component to this struggle, remarking “If you don’t own a train company then you go and paint on one instead.” Banksy’s work has also shown a desire to mock centralised power, hoping that their work will show the public that although power does exist and works against you, that power is not terribly efficient and it can and should be deceived.

Banksy’s works have dealt with various political and social themes, including anti-war, anti-consumerism, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, anti-authoritarianism, anarchism, nihilism, and existentialism. Additionally, the components of the human condition that his works commonly critique are greed, poverty, hypocrisy, boredom, despair, absurdity, and alienation. Although Banksy’s works usually rely on visual imagery and iconography to put forth their message, Banksy has made several politically related comments in their various books. In summarising his list of “people who should be shot”, he listed “Fascist thugs, religious fundamentalists, (and) people who write lists telling you who should be shot.”