BANKSY AND OSCAR

This week we got our own Banksy. Well at least, our local ex-prison did. In the cover of night, the guerilla artist used his classic template-and-spray-can technique to add a poignant piece to the stern red brickwork of the exterior wall.

The prison, famous for once housing and inspiring Oscar Wilde, has been a youth-offending institute for a number of years, and was recently decommissioned, scheduled for demolition. It is after all, prime town-centre real-estate. The work of the world's most famous street artist might have just scuppered that plan - or perhaps even accelerated it; time will tell.

Anyway, much to the delight of those who opposed the development and wanted it turned into an arts hub, it, and now us, actually have our own genuine article.

I say us. This is the effect of Banksy: he generates a unique community wherever he turns up. There is suddenly an 'us', gathering around, taking photos, being together, pasting our selfies on social media excitedly. There's a sort of thrill at being chosen, as though the gods have decided to bless us with golden tulips, the infinite harvest or the fountain of life in the town square. Or in this case, a stencilled image of a prisoner escaping on a trail of typewriter paper. It's big news round these parts.

There were debates years ago, weren't there, about whether Banksy himself might be just a glorified vandal. In fact, if his work weren't so valuable these days, I truly think that discussion would still be ongoing. Instead of using it as a fawning publicity piece for our town, the local council would have been scrubbing it off like chewing gum under the nozzle of the high pressure jet. But there be money in it. They've already contacted the Ministry of Justice to try to get the work protected.

In many ways then, Banksy might just be the greatest contemporary artist we have - not just by daubing graffiti, but by starting a conversation, by drawing together communities around his message, by using that singular combination of fame and anonymity to speak loudly and silently into the world. Some may say he's on the wrong side of that prison wall; some may say his work supersedes the letter of the law, and others say he rightly transcends it, even descends it on the other side of it, like Oscar Wilde - an artist whose brilliant work outlives his prison sentence, the prison that held him, and the very reason he found himself there.