Banksy’s first widely recognized large mural, The Mild Mild West, was painted on Stokes Croft in Bristol, helping establish his presence in the city’s late-1990s street-art scene.
By around 2000, Banksy increasingly adopted stencilling to work faster and reduce the time spent exposed while painting illegally—an approach that became central to his signature visual language.
The stencil image Girl with Balloon began appearing on London streets in 2002, becoming one of Banksy’s best-known recurring motifs and a key example of UK stencil street art entering mass public consciousness.
Pictures on Walls (POW) began in 2003, helping distribute affordable editions and prints (including Banksy-related releases), strengthening a market infrastructure that amplified UK street art’s reach beyond the street.
A large, iconic version of The Flower Thrower (Love Is in the Air) appeared as a mural in the West Bank in 2003, using role reversal (a protester throwing flowers) as a widely legible anti-violence image tied to geopolitical conflict.
Banksy staged Turf War in an East London warehouse in July 2003, his first major UK exhibition; it mixed stencils, altered paintings, and painted live animals, signaling street art’s growing crossover into event-based exhibition formats.
Banksy-associated Santa’s Ghetto operated as a Christmas-season pop-up shop/event in London in 2004, blending street-art culture with retail and helping normalize the movement’s transition into purchasable objects and editions.
Banksy’s book Wall and Piece was published in 2005, compiling images and interventions that helped circulate UK street art globally through mainstream publishing channels.
In October 2005, Banksy staged Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin in Notting Hill, exhibiting altered oil paintings and reinforcing his critique of art-world hierarchies while drawing large public attention.
Barely Legal opened in September 2006 in Los Angeles, featuring installations including a live painted elephant; the high-profile show drew major media coverage and accelerated international attention on Banksy and UK stencil-led street art.
Banksy organized The Cans Festival over 3–5 May 2008 in Leake Street (near Waterloo), inviting artists to paint the tunnel and helping cement a major London site associated with legal/accepted street-art practice and public visibility.
In 2009, Banksy announced Pest Control as the only point of sale/authentication route for new works, formalizing controls around legitimacy and value as the market for UK street art intensified.
Banksy’s large-scale institutional takeover, Banksy vs Bristol Museum, opened in June 2009 at Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery, placing over 100 works amid the museum’s collections and demonstrating how UK street art could reshape major public institutions.
Banksy’s film Exit Through the Gift Shop premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 24 January 2010, bringing street-art narratives to a global cinema audience and influencing how the movement (including UK street art) was understood in popular culture.
Banksy and the Rise of UK Street Art (1997–2010)
