Barely Legal was the third major exhibition after the Turf War and Crude Oils. It took place on the weekend of 16 September 2006 in a warehouse in Los Angeles and was billed as a “three-day vandalised warehouse extravaganza”.
The exhibition featured a live “elephant in the room,” painted in a pink and gold floral wallpaper pattern. According to leaflets handed out at the show, “the elephant in the room” is intended to draw attention to the issue of world poverty. Banksy continued exploring the modified oil genre from the previous Crude Oils exhibition.
Reverse reads:
There’s an elephant in the room. There’s a problem that we never talk about.
The fact is that life isn’t getting any fairer.
- 1.7 Billion people have no access to clean drinking water.
- 20 Billion people live below the poverty line.
- Every day hundreds of people are made to feel physically sick by morons at art shows telling them how bad the world is but never actually doing something about it.
Anybody want a free glass of wine?
Banksy, Los Angeles 2006