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Lot Essay
Executed in 2019, Goldfish Bowl formed part of the artist’s headline-grabbing exhibition-meets-store Gross Domestic Product, which opened on Church Street in Croydon, London in October 2019. The show was the Bristol-born street artist’s characteristically provocative response to an ongoing trademark dispute with a greetings card business who had reproduced his iconic images on their products. Contesting legal custody of the Banksy name with the EU’s trademark court, EUIPO, the artist designed and sold his own merchandise from the shop space. Poking holes in contemporary consumer society with pithy, caricatured, and outright dysfunctional homewares, Banksy’s Gross Domestic Products were accompanied by the satirical jingle ‘where art irritates life’. One from a small edition of fifteen, Goldfish Bowl comprises one of the rarer works to come from GDP, and is the first of its kind to come to auction. It features two glistening resin goldfish, one of which has jumped from its bowl in a heroic leap of faith to the frame of a printed canvas which bears an idyllic seascape. Gazing wistfully at a cinematic scene of crashing salt-water waves from the border of the picture plane, the goldfish is caught, somewhat beached, between two dismal fates.
Among the line of domestic products available at Banksy’s parody shop was the Clutch Bag made from a real house brick, ‘perfect for the kind of person who doesn’t carry much but might need to whack someone in the face’; the Early Learning Counting Set which conflated a child’s play toy with the horrific reality of migrant trafficking; and the iconic Vest, a Union Jack stab-proof, but not machine-washable vest—notably worn by British rapper Stormzy during his headline performance at Glastonbury Festival a year later. Trademarked to excess, Banksy makes a playful nod to his infringers, while evoking the overwhelming surplus of branded, commercial goods under Western capitalism. Each product is steeped in dystopic threat, targeting a consumer whose needs are reflective—albeit ironically—of a society ridden with issues of street violence, knife crime, surveillance, and a devastating refugee crisis.
Goldfish Bowl is certainly no exception. The common, famously unintelligent domestic pet longs for a life beyond the monotonous and claustrophobic trappings of its bowl. Estranged from its feigned home and yet also barred from its natural habitat in an absurd sequence of events, the fish’s hopeful pursuit is futile. Rich with association, Banksy’s scene speaks to a broader message of humanity. At once the synthetic fish conjures the repetitive mundanity of everyday life, makes tongue-in-cheek reference to marine plastic pollution, and more profoundly explores freedom of movement and migration. The subject of the goldfish bowl evidently interested Banksy: he had explored it almost a decade earlier in his chalk-drawn Living Room Scene on Regent’s Canal in Camden (2011). No longer faced with the constrictions of time, the two-dimensional wall, and the very real dangers of in-situ spray painting, Goldfish Bowl offers a rare glimpse into the artist’s capacity for complex, sculptural explorations of materiality. Recalling his earlier ‘Vandalised Oils’, where the artist modified and riffed on canonical masterpieces, the addition of the protruding goldfish, individual water droplets and bowl break through the painterly dimension. Exaggerating the banal artificiality of the work—the antique frame is, in reality, painted resin, the painting itself merely a kitsch printed canvas—Banksy perforates the thin veil of the consumer good; the utopic dreamland advertised within the canvas is exposed as counterfeit.
Among the line of domestic products available at Banksy’s parody shop was the Clutch Bag made from a real house brick, ‘perfect for the kind of person who doesn’t carry much but might need to whack someone in the face’; the Early Learning Counting Set which conflated a child’s play toy with the horrific reality of migrant trafficking; and the iconic Vest, a Union Jack stab-proof, but not machine-washable vest—notably worn by British rapper Stormzy during his headline performance at Glastonbury Festival a year later. Trademarked to excess, Banksy makes a playful nod to his infringers, while evoking the overwhelming surplus of branded, commercial goods under Western capitalism. Each product is steeped in dystopic threat, targeting a consumer whose needs are reflective—albeit ironically—of a society ridden with issues of street violence, knife crime, surveillance, and a devastating refugee crisis.
Goldfish Bowl is certainly no exception. The common, famously unintelligent domestic pet longs for a life beyond the monotonous and claustrophobic trappings of its bowl. Estranged from its feigned home and yet also barred from its natural habitat in an absurd sequence of events, the fish’s hopeful pursuit is futile. Rich with association, Banksy’s scene speaks to a broader message of humanity. At once the synthetic fish conjures the repetitive mundanity of everyday life, makes tongue-in-cheek reference to marine plastic pollution, and more profoundly explores freedom of movement and migration. The subject of the goldfish bowl evidently interested Banksy: he had explored it almost a decade earlier in his chalk-drawn Living Room Scene on Regent’s Canal in Camden (2011). No longer faced with the constrictions of time, the two-dimensional wall, and the very real dangers of in-situ spray painting, Goldfish Bowl offers a rare glimpse into the artist’s capacity for complex, sculptural explorations of materiality. Recalling his earlier ‘Vandalised Oils’, where the artist modified and riffed on canonical masterpieces, the addition of the protruding goldfish, individual water droplets and bowl break through the painterly dimension. Exaggerating the banal artificiality of the work—the antique frame is, in reality, painted resin, the painting itself merely a kitsch printed canvas—Banksy perforates the thin veil of the consumer good; the utopic dreamland advertised within the canvas is exposed as counterfeit.