Robin Banksy

A Memoir

By: Robin Barton

Narrated by: Nick Moran

Robin Banksy is a 30-year romp through London’s art world seen through the eyes of its narrator, a thirsty and ambitious fame-hungry photographer turned art dealer.

Hell bent on making mischief, Robin accidentally finds himself pitched against the global phenomenon artist and activist Banksy. Ditching a successful career as a celebrity portraitist following an unfortunate drinking incident, he opens a hopelessly ill thought out niche art gallery "Bankrobber" in London’s fashionable Notting Hill Gate and is naively coerced into displaying a street work by the revered artist resulting in a tidal wave of threats and abuse.

Following a threatening call from the artist's girl Friday demanding he cease and desist he chooses instead to pick up the proffered gauntlet putting in play a Cat and Mouse game that was to last a decade, a rollercoaster ride littered with law suits, litigation, and mischievous obfuscation. Gathering together a firm headed up by a sociopathic scaffolder named Sky Grimes, he sets about planning the removal and sale of some of the artists most celebrated "Street Works" resulting in a global outpouring of moral and media outrage.

Robin subverting the artists famed anonymity to his own ends creates a smokescreen of doubt and duplicity that brings to question both he and his nemesis true motifs and identity. Casting himself as the villainous "Sheriff of Notting-Hill Gate" pitted against Banksy's "Robin Hood" there follows a chaotic and bizarre journey that sees him visiting Palestine, Long Island and Miami in his avaricious quest.

Littered throughout the memoir are anecdotes and observations on how the "Art World" was successfully hijacked by exiled City traders and turned into the money laundering "Art Market" of today. All set against the background of a London of lost drinking dens and louche behaviour.

Culminating in a tawdry vaudevillian "Music Hall" farce, essentially a two hander one nameless and one shameless.

Were it not for my Robin Banksy, when Banksy was Robin you, who had really been Robin who?

[audience] "He’s behind you! Oh no he’s not!"

©2021 Robin Barton (P)2022 Robin Barton