Banksy – Girl with Balloon/Morons

The girl with the balloon is one of Banksy’s most famous images. It also brought a softer sensibility to street art which is often seen as aggressive and political, and in a British poll in 2017 it was voted as the nation’s favourite piece of art. This version of the image is stencilled on canvas, but perhaps the most celebrated of its appearances was the stencilled image discovered on the side of some concrete stairs on the South Bank in London. Behind the girl was written in white against the dark grime of the wall ‘There is always hope’. It was the combination of the image, the words, and the bleak environment it was painted in which gave the artwork a powerful poignancy.