HMV (His Master Voice)
Silkscreen print
49 x 35 cm
Not For Sale
His Master’s Voice is one of the earliest images made by Banksy, appearing in Bristol as a stencil in various sizes and colours, and later made as a silkscreen print. HMV is a modified allusion to the logo of the British record label founded in 1920 following the advent of wind-up gramophones. The original logo showed a dog looking curi- ously at a gramophone, listening to its owner’s voice. Banksy transformed the scene so that the dog, exhausted from listening, aims a bazooka at the gramophone. The humorous element to the work is open to various interpretations: on the one hand, it shows us how to confront obsolete ways to thinking, while on the other, it underlines the possible outcome of tensions over the aging western population; it could also suggest how to behave towards anyone who declares themselves to be the owner of something.