In July 2003, Britain's "most celebrated graffiti artist" Banksy, famed for leaving such subversive images as riot police with smiley faces and the Mona Lisa firing a rocket launcher on walls and bridges throughout London, launched an exhibition called 'Turf War' featuring a variety of live animals. Among the offerings? Pigs painted in police-uniform colors, sheep in concentration-camp stripes and a cow covered with images of Andy Warhol's face. [Click 'banksy' above for images.] The exhibition, held in a London warehouse, drew animal rights protesters, among them a woman who chained herself to railings surrounding the cow. The famously unassuming Banksy slipped out of the warehouse before the launch party and denied, through a spokeswoman, that the exhibition marked his entrance into mainstream culture.
Sources
BBC Newsl ananova.com, 18th July 2003
