While
Banksy might be the world's best known stencil artist, Blek Le Rat is the godfather of the art form. Banksy once said "Every time I think I've painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek Le Rat has done it as well, only twenty years earlier." Born Xavier Prou in Paris in 1952, Blek Le Rat pretty much invented stencil art as we know it.
In 1981 the streets of Paris began being covered in images of plump, life-sized rats: "I had the idea to use stencils to make graffiti for one reason. I did not want to imitate the American graffiti that I had seen in New York in 1971... I wanted to have my own style in the street. I began to spray some rats in the streets of Paris because rats are the only wild living animals in cities and only rats will survive when the human race will have disappeared and died out."
Blek's iconic images – on walls and fences from Paris to New York – often aim to inspire social awareness, thought, reaction and change.
Interviewed for
Lifelounge's Food Edition, Blek said that if he could invite anybody to a dinner party it would be "Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Shepard Fairey and Banksy to have a beggar's banquet like the image on the Rolling Stones' album".
Blek Le Rat is visiting Australia for the very first time this month to raise awareness of global social issues via an exhibition of his most iconic works from the last 28 years.
The exhibition is at
Metro Gallery, Melbourne from 2nd to 24th December.
Opening night is Wednesday 2nd December from 6.30pm.
More at
bleklerat.free.fr.