There’s a wonderful (unauthorised) Banksy retrospective in New York at the moment. It’s called Banksy — Building Castles in the Sky and includes paintings, prints, posters, a sculpture, books and a selection of record and CD covers showing the many facets of Banksy’s art. It’s at 250 Bowery, on the Lower East Side, until December 31st 2022.

But there is one piece in particular that I’ve never seen before. It’s an early painting on board that was intended to be used as the cover art for a Massive Attack album (for Mezzanine I wonder?) However, it was never used.

This piece, 71 x 74 cms is dated 1998-1999 and is one of the first works one sees when entering the exhibition. It portrays Robert del Naja as a DJ in front of a circular saw. The sky background — reminicent of Yoko Ono’s cover for John Lennon’s Imagine album or the cloud on the cover of the Plastic Ono Band’s Live Peace in Toronto 1969 album — is painted while Del Naja is stencilled onto the background.

The star that Del Naja seems to be staring at recurs on Banksy’s Zapatista footballer from 2001.

Thus, the Cloud DJ image should be added to a discography of Banksy art on record, CD or cassette.