The commoditization and commercialisation of London street art
From Bristol and the rise of Banksy to the '90s Young British Artists in Shoreditch, and the 2012 Olympics and vast redevelopment
I want to shine a light on street art in the capital, and how it’s changed over the last two decades, and not for the better. We’re at the point now where it’s about as commodified and commercialised as it can get, which saddens me.
I like to think I have some perspective, too, as I’ve lived in London since 2006 and watched it change a lot over a twenty-year period. I didn’t think it had changed all that much, but in the last few years I’ve been reflecting on London’s slow evolution, and it has morphed quite a bit, in many ways, with numerous areas gentrifying as the edgiest bits of the capital slowly get sanded down, until they’re smooth and palatable for tourists and NIMBYs wanting that subtle taste of art, culture and creativity, but none of the edge you’d get if the area had remained true to its roots.
And street art is, or was, a bit of a barometer for that sort of thing — as you’d often find it concentrated in areas where the most artists and creatives lived and worked, places like Shoreditch, Brick Lane and Hackney Wick. All, funnily enough, located in East London, an area which used to be considered poor. Or at least, less wealthy than affluent West London.
Although the evolution and rise in gentrification of East London directly mirrors the decline in street art in the area. A negative correlation, if you will. And this change has been a long time coming (perhaps since the ‘80s, and definitely the ‘90s), but at the very least in the last twenty years (during my time in the city), and accelerated with the 2012 Olympics, hosted in Lower Lea Valley in Stratford, East London, which overhauled the area, and continues to impact nearby formerly creative places like Hackney Wick — an area that’s been gutted, which we’ll come back to.
But, as ever, I’m going on a bit of a rant. So let’s return to street art and where things began, and how it all began to change.
Bristol street art, and the rise of Banksy
First off I should say, I’m a firm believer that street art should stay where it started; namely, on the streets. It shouldn’t be sold, and it definitely shouldn’t end up in art galleries. Or even start life in galleries, to be honest — because if it does, then it shouldn’t be called street art. It’s supposed to be countercultural. Or at least it was, originally, but things have changed.
I do think an allowance should be made for exhibitions which document the history of this urban art form, but that’s it. I remember, in 2021, going to one called ‘Vanguard Bristol street art: the evolution’ at the M Shed, a museum in Bristol. This exhibition celebrated how the city had led the way for graffiti and modern street art in Britain, and showcased artists who were active in the ‘80s and ‘90s in Bristol at the time — with sound system and B-boy culture tied up in this scene and form of public self-expression. That exhibition was informative and fascinating.
Whilst Bristol cannot claim to be the birthplace of graffiti and street art (as France and New York can fight for that title, with Philadelphia’s Cornbread being one of its first artists in 1965 and Brooklyn’s Fab 5 Freddy an architect of the movement in the late ‘70s), the city did show Britain the way — led by people like 3D (Robert Del Naja) in the early ‘80s. He was widely considered Bristol’s first graffiti artist, bringing the art form over from the US.
Del Naja was part of musical collective The Wild Bunch, and a founding member of trip-hop band Massive Attack. Banksy, who became active in the ‘90s, frequently cited Del Naja as a major early inspiration for his work. Although there’s a working theory that Del Naja is Banksy, and they are one and the same person.
Whoever he is, Banksy was the figure that most notably emerged from the Bristol scene to become the world’s most famous street artist.
I lived in Bristol for three years, between 2001-2004, whilst I attended university, and this time period matched Banksy’s rise in fame. For a year I lived near The Arches, at the bottom of Gloucester Road, and regularly found myself walking through Stokes Croft, which is where I’d see one of Banksy’s earliest and most iconic pieces from 1999, The Mild Mild West, a teddy bear throwing a Molotov at three riot police — which was done in response to police raiding a warehouse party in 1997. He painted this piece in broad daylight, apparently, and it’s still there.
I remember at the time Banksy having some level of fame if you lived in Bristol. I’m not sure how well known he was outside of the city, though. He was emerging, I’d say. Bear in mind, this was still early days for the internet, and social media platforms like Facebook only launched in 2004.
In terms of fame, though, Banksy had a tipping point between 2003-2005, which was down to a few moves: in 2002 he had his first international exhibition in LA called Existencilism, then Turf War in London in 2003. In 2005 he secretly installed paintings in major museums, like the Met in New York and Tate Britain in London, and stencilled murals on the West Bank barrier in Palestine in 2005. A year later he had a warehouse installation in LA called Barely Legal, which drew celebrities like a moth to a flame.
One of his pieces, Space Girl and Bird, at that event sold for £288,000, twenty times its estimated value, cementing his status in the commercial art world.
Then in 2008, in a dank tunnel called Leake Street, underneath Waterloo train station in London, Banksy, along with a number of his artist friends from around the world, launched the Cans Festival — effectively a celebration of street art, with artists transforming the street and tunnel, with installations and art on every square inch of space they could find. I attended that, and remember it well. The queues to see it were huge.
Leake Street Tunnel, as it’s now known, was permanently changed as a result, and became a go-to destination for street artists looking to showcase their work in London in the years since. Although I’d say it’s now become so mainstream and commercialised, with ‘graffiti workshops’ and so on, that it’s lost all semblance of an edge, but we’ll try and come back to this.
The final thing which secured Banksy’s status was his Oscar-nominated documentary, Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010), which he wrote, directed, and possibly starred in. Since its release there was debate about whether this film was genuine or a mockumentary, to which Banksy simply replied: ‘yes’.
I’ve gone into this history because a lot of Banksy’s work has led us directly to where we are now, and somewhat explains what happens to the art he now creates. Not that he can be blamed for the commercialisation and commoditization of street art in 2026, but when underground scenes become mainstream, this is often the inevitable conclusion. There’s a bottle episode of TV show Mythic Quest which touches on this, called A Dark Quiet Death, which I’ve written about before. It tells the story of two video game designers called Doc and Bean who meet, fall in love, and create a survival horror game which becomes popular.
A big publisher buys them out, commercialises the game and sands off its edges — even introducing a child-friendly mascot. Slowly selling their soul and watching their creative work die causes Doc and Bean to split up, with them leading separate lives, neither owning or working on the game they both lovingly created. It’s heartbreaking, and masterful storytelling. The episode is essentially a love letter to creativity and its cost.
London now, and how street art has been co-opted, eroded and outright stolen
If we look at various pockets of creativity and areas of street art in the capital and how they’ve either diminished through development and gentrification, or been co-opted by commercial organisations over the years, it paints a stark picture.
First, we have Old Street and Shoreditch. The two areas overlap so it makes sense to group them. Old Street is a 1-mile road in north-east central London that runs east to west, with a roundabout and tube station in the middle. I worked just off this roundabout for two years, from 2010 to 2012, which was known as Silicon Roundabout (because of a cluster of tech start-ups based there). If you head east from the tube it’s not long before the road splits, where it meets the top of Great Eastern Street and then leads into Shoreditch.
In the ‘80s and ‘90s this was a place that drew in creatives, who took over studios vacated by departing textile and tailoring businesses. In 1993 a group of Young British Artists (YBAs), which included Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Gavin Turk and Gillian Wearing held a chaotic countercultural village-style fete (called ‘A fete worse than death’) to sell their art, which acted as a launchpad for the YBAs, and played a pivotal role in the ‘90s art scene. Performance artist, club promoter and fashion designer, Leigh Bowery, was also at that fete.
This fete was considered ground zero, in terms of kicking off Shoreditch’s gentrification. The influx of the art and music crowd sparked the area’s regeneration, which, over the next decade or so, began to price out the very artists who started the movement. Many believe that the 2012 London Olympics was the last true time for artists in East London, as that event kicked off another wave of regeneration, with many creatives choosing to move out of the city and head to the coast, to places like Margate. Or further afield, with Berlin being a popular choice.
That said, for maybe two decades, from the early ‘90s to the early 2010s, places like Shoreditch were an appealing place for creatives and drew in street artists. Banksy turned up there in the early 2000s. One of his first pieces, Girl With Balloon, was painted on the side of a printing shop in Shoreditch in 2002.
And two other early works he did, The Giant Rat, a 6-meter tall rat with a knife and fork, and The TV Out The Window, a TV tossed out a window whilst still plugged into the wall, could be found in a car park behind The Foundry bar and arts venue. They were created in 2004 and covered up for years.
The Foundry building was interesting. It was located at that fork in the road, where Old Street meets the top of Great Eastern Street, and was formerly a 1950s Barclays Bank building. It opened as The Foundry in 1989. Bill Drummond of late-80s avant-garde electronic band The KLF helped set it up, and it was designed to be a hub for art, music and poetry in the community. Indeed, over the years it was said to have hosted 2000 different art shows and 3500 artists, with people like Pete Doherty of the band The Libertines hosting poetry, and the band Hot Chip forming there.
Sadly, in 2010 it closed, and was knocked down to make way for an 18-storey hotel called, depressingly, Art’otel. Part of planning permission from Hackney Council was that the aforementioned Banksy artworks would be saved, preserved and displayed in the hotel’s lobby. One of the YBAs, Gavin Turk, who exhibited there, lamented its closure, and said to The Guardian in 2010: ‘If you go there you realise that it’s not like any other space in London. Shoreditch has become so commercialised, like the new West End, and there isn’t really anywhere that runs like The Foundry does.’
This co-opting of art by commercial organisations has continued in the area, too, and arguably accelerated. Further down Great Eastern Street a hotel from hipster hotel chain citizenM was built in 2016. In the surrounding area you’d have previously found a lot of street art in nearby car parks. This has slowly begun to vanish as those car parks have been developed. It’s also worth noting Shoreditch High Street station, part of the overground line, opened in 2010, making access to the area easier, ahead of the 2012 Olympics.
Things continue to change, too, in 2026. A stone’s throw from citizenM, along Great Eastern Street, is Village Underground, a renowned arts and music venue. In 2007 four decommissioned tube carriages were hoisted onto the old railway viaduct to provide cheap studio space for struggling artists. Although as of next month, July, two carriages will be removed to make way for a rooftop bar. Presumably because the artists that used these spaces have long since left, and Village Underground needs money, given the struggling state of London’s nightlife.
Another iconic building on Great Eastern Street is the American Carwash building, a 1960s brutalist multi-storey car park that has a 24/7 carwash and valet at the bottom. The building has been covered in art for years. Other than the carwash the rest is disused, and it’s a site that’s been marked for redevelopment as part of Hackney Council’s ‘future Shoreditch’ plan. Which basically means they plan to turn it into nondescript offices (as per page 96 of their plan, I checked).
Moving on from Old Street and Shoreditch, and because I’ve mentioned the 2012 Olympics a few times, we have Hackney Wick and Fish Island, two adjacent areas four miles further east, nestled between a busy dual carriageway to the west and Hackney Marshes and Lower Lea Valley to the east, with the River Lea winding through it. The Lower Lea Valley was a brownfield site which became the 2012 Olympics site.
In 2016, an article on news website The Conversation called ‘Going, going gone…’ talked about how the Olympic legacy is ‘killing London’s creative culture’, mentioning how the Olympic park developments were the largest programme of legally enforced evictions in England. At the time of publication of the article more than 600 artist studios made up an ecosystem in Hackney Wick that nurtured creativity and innovation. Despite protest, the majority of them were forced out for the Olympics and made to relocate.
According to research, the Olympics also had minimal positive impact on local artists. There’s even a story where organisers removed local street art, replacing it with specially-commissioned pieces by international artists. Gentrified street art, if you will. Strict copyright rules prevented local artists from using Olympic rings and symbols in their artwork too, although many did as a form of protest. Here are pictures I took of some pieces of street art in Shoreditch in 2012, at that time. These were by artist CodeFC, who did stencils of athletes with cameras for faces, critiquing the surveillance and mass commercialisation of the event.
In 2022 an article in The Guardian called ‘A massive betrayal’ the paper questioned who really benefited from ‘this orgy of development?’, referencing numerous new buildings going up promising ‘luxury living’, with not an affordable home in sight.
Hackney Wick and Fish Island, which seemed to hold out in terms of redevelopment for a while, have now seen the entire area completely gutted, rebuilt and replaced with luxury apartments in the last few years. I walked around the area a few months ago, and almost all the places you’d normally find street art and artist studios have gone, leaving behind a shadow of its former self. And that shadow, or mere suggestion of edge and creativity, is what gets marketed to young rich hipsters looking to move to the area.
An interesting example of ‘edge’, as a word I keep using, and creativity fighting back, or hanging in there in the face of rapid development, is the Lord Napier pub, close to Hackney Wick station. The pub originally opened in the 1860s and got a reputation as a hotspot for assaults and robberies. At various times it was used by squatters, and raves were held there in the early 2000s. The venue closed in 1995, and remained that way for 26 years, until they revamped and reopened it in 2021. The new owners promised to reflect the history of the building, using local artists to decorate the place, including the original artist who painted the building.
Round the corner there’s Queen’s Yard, once a spot full of bars, nightclubs and street art. The yard is currently in the process of being almost completely demolished, although that’s been on the cards for some time. On a planner’s Instagram they’ve posted excitedly about transforming it into a ‘distinctive cultural destination’ for visitors, whatever that means. I already thought it was. The Colour Factory nightclub and Crate Brewery and Pizza have been spared the axe… for now. Although the Yard Theatre is getting knocked down and rebuilt. I suspect it won’t be the same vibe afterwards.
The approved proposal, so say the planners, includes a gym with, wait for it, two padel courts. If anything could signal gentrification faster than the phrase ‘padel court’ I’d like to hear it. Incidentally, residents in Bethnal Green in East London were recently angered when faced with the arrival of a padel court. One spawned into existence in Bethnal Green Gardens, on top of a free court that was popular with skaters, effectively forcing them out, replaced by a £24 an hour padel court nobody wanted or asked for. Blame Tower Hamlets Council. For reference, it’s nearly always the council that makes things worse.
To end this piece I want to return to Banksy, his art, and its value. Nowadays, he’s reached such a level of fame that any artwork he creates, particularly in London, is often stolen within hours — with the aim to sell it on the black market.
In 2019 in Paris, Banksy painted Sad Girl on the fire door of Bataclan music hall, to honour the victims of the 2015 terror attacks. This work was stolen by thieves with angle grinders. Eight men were convicted of this crime. In 2023, within an hour of Banksy sharing an image of a traffic stop sign he’d modified with three military drones in Peckham, Southeast London, two men tore it down. They were arrested. A year later, again in Rye Lane in Peckham, Banksy unveiled a howling wolf on a satellite dish as part of an animal-themed series. Masked men uninstalled the dish in broad daylight and carried it away whilst onlookers filmed them.
Perhaps theft of Banksy’s art, due to its perceived value, is now part of the art itself. Although Banksy does, it seems, draw the line on brands co-opting his work. In 2022 US clothing brand Guess said it had gotten permission to put his art on its clothes, but Banksy disagreed, and encouraged people to ‘help themselves’ to Guess’ clothes. As a result the store closed, added security and covered up its window display.
Around this time Banksy also won an appeal at the EU IP office to keep the trademark of one of his most famous images, Laugh Now, a monkey wearing a sandwich board. So he must care about his works and want to control how they are released in the world, to some degree. Ultimately, it comes down to what is ‘establishment’ and what is not. Given street art blossomed as a countercultural art form in the streets, it makes sense that Banksy wants some level of control over how much it remains there.
Last year he made headlines with a new piece on the walls of the Royal Courts Of Justice in London, with work which showed a judge beating a protestor with a gavel, the protestor’s placard splattered with blood. This mural turned up a few days after almost 900 people were arrested at a London protest for a ban on Palestine Action. Officials covered the artwork and tried to clean it off, but it left behind a ghostly outline of the original image, which somehow made it more impactful.
I suppose, to conclude, I should say… well, there’s no real conclusion to be made. Other than street art seems to be two things at once these days: both countercultural and a form of protest, and also deeply embedded as part of the mainstream. I suspect that uneasy truce or alliance is as good as it’s going to get for fans of this type of art.
I’ll finish with a couple of images that, I think, sum up what street art should be. I took both of these. One in London and one in Bristol.
I was born and raised in Bristol, yet I didn't really know about Banksy's works around the city until me and my wife took an audio tour. We went around places and streets I recognised well, but it wasn't until I looked properly that I saw the artwork as it was meant to be seen and considered their deeper meanings. It was actually very interesting looking at my birth city in a different light.