There is a cultural organisation in Italy called Azzociatione Metamorfosi that arranges educational art exhibitions ranging from Michaelangelo to Caravaggio and most recently the artist known as Banksy. Metamorfosi have engaged art experts Stefano Antonelli, Gianluca Marziani and the British gallerist Acoris Andipa to curate an unauthorised exhibition of the Banksy’s art currently called Banksy: Building Castles in the Sky. The organisers are careful to point out that the exhibition does not involve Banksy himself nor does it include works removed from buildings or public spaces.

The exhibition was first shown at the Palazzo Cipolla in Rome in 2016 when it was called War, Capitalism and Liberty. The current exhibition opened in Genoa in November 2019 and was called The Second Principle of Banksy. It moved to several Italian cities during 2020 and thereafter to Basel and finally to Lugarno in Switzerland metamorphosing into its present form as Banksy: Building Castles in the Sky. The exhibition opened at the former Institute of Photography, 250 Bowery, New York, on May 28th 2022 and will run until the end of the year.

In 2021 Antonelli and Marziani published their book Banksy in Italian and published it in English in May 2022 to coincide with the opening of the New York exhibition. The book, Simply entitled Banksy is published by Rizzoli/Elektra (ISBN 978-0-8478-7276-3).

It is, as far as I know, the first authoratative and critical analysis of Banksy’s art produced by independant art experts. It runs to 240 pages and is profusely illustrated in colour. All the best-loved Banksy images are, of course, included along with many less well-known ones. There’s Girl With Balloon, Rage: Flower Thrower, Monkey Parliament all arranged along a timeline so the reader can follow the artist’s progression. It’s reasonaby priced at £29.95 / $40.