The controversial Banksy exhibition The Art Of Banksy will come to Sydney in September, bringing with it 80 original Banksy works, including some of his most iconic pieces, such as Girl With Red Balloon, Flower Thrower and Rude Copper.

The show, which has toured the world and was in Melbourne in 2016, is unauthorised – the British street artist has not given the curator, Steve Lazarides, Banksy’s first art dealer, former manager and photographer,
permission to put on the exhibition.

Lazarides has opened up his private collection and brought together borrowed pieces from private collectors to create The Art Of Banksy. There are canvasses, screen-prints and sculptures from 1997 to 2008, a period during which the anonymous artist produced some of his most recognisable and best-known pieces. The show will also provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the creation of Banksy’s artworks and process.

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“The show is definitely unauthorised,” Lazarides told Broadsheet in 2016. “One hundred per cent, completely and utterly unsanctioned.

“But if I didn’t break this work out of storage and collectors’ homes it would never be seen. I think a lot of the work he made during this period 15 years ago has more resonance now than when they were painted.”

Lazarides worked with Banksy when he was employed as picture director of Sleaze Nation magazine. Both are from Bristol and back then Lazarides sold the guerilla artist’s work out the back of a car boot for 50 quid apiece. Banksy’s work now sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Lazarides was instrumental in bringing graffiti and street art into galleries and the mainstream market.

He is also one of the few people who knows the elusive artist’s identity. It is a well-kept, much debated secret. “It was fun for a few years, then it got really boring after awhile,” he says. “... Everyone thinks [the anonymity] was this insanely clever marketing ploy. It wasn’t. It was self-preservation. In Bristol at the time the authorities had a pretty hardcore attitude towards street art. It wasn’t as easy as it is nowadays to go and put something up on the street. So the only way for him not to get arrested was to be very, very secretive.”

The Art of Banksy is at the Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park, from Friday September 13. Tickets go on sale on Friday August 2 at 4pm, but presale is happening now. Tickets available here.