![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Mitchells-collection-Banksy-02-1-scaled.jpg\")
<\/a>The pop-art movement\u2014taking place in post-war 1960s North America\u2014satirically regurgitated the bright colours, commanding text, and instantly gratifying nature of advertising that has been inundating Western culture since the Industrial Revolution.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe work of art itself takes on the format and appearance of advertising,\u201d says McNeil.<\/p>\n There is a strong element of graffiti in the show, he says, with several works from Banksy, a pseudonymous English artist who creates political graffiti-based street art, often utilizing stencils, and Mr. Brainwash, also a pseudonymous English artist, best known for graffiti works that bridge the gap between graffiti and fine art.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the power behind graffiti art is the idea that it can be anonymous, appear overnight, and transform a public space that wasn\u2019t intended to be a space for art, but suddenly becomes a space for art,\u201d says McNeil. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of crossover to the way that earlier pop artists disseminated prints and had them spread across the world, and showed big numbers of the same repetitive image.\u201d<\/p>\n Along with the Warhol pieces in the exhibit, there will also be works shown by American pop artists Tom Wesselmann and Roy Lichtenstein, who brought illustrations from comics and graphic novels into the fine-art world, reflecting popular culture and a piece of the average consumer\u2019s life in the gallery. McNeil says the exhibit will also feature work by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. (There is also a smaller companion exhibition running alongside From Warhol to Banksy<\/i>\u2014From Balzar to Hunt<\/i>, a collection of pop art from British Columbia curated to complement the main exhibit that includes major work from Shawn Hunt, Joan Balzar, Audrey Riller, and more.)<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s quite flashy and pretty in the same way a commercial product would be,\u201d he says. \u201cIt plays on animation and parts of Japanese culture that are related to pop art in the same way as the subjects that Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol looked to\u2014comic book characters and more popular life things.\u201d<\/p>\n The exhibit will also see the first Victoria screening of the 2017 HBO documentary Brillo Box (3 \u00a2 off)<\/i>, directed by Lisanne Skyler.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt is a documentary that looks to how one of [Andy Warhol\u2019s] brillo box sculptures played a big role in a family\u2019s life,\u201d says McNeil. \u201cThey acquired one early on for a low value, and then these works took on much higher values over time. So it\u2019s a documentary that really delves into the art market and how something bought at one point in someone\u2019s life can have a big impact on their life later on.\u201d<\/p>\n