3D Rat first appeared on a theatre door during the 2010 Sundance Film Festival on the back door of the famous Egyptian Theater in Park City, Utah. Along with 3D Rat, a spate of other street art pieces including Cameraman and Flower and a giant Banksy tag across a billboard also appeared to coincide with the World premier of the Banksy film “Exit Through The Gift Shop”.

Synonymous with many of the artist’s most famous works, rats as a subject matter have served to propel Banksy to becoming the most in-demand and collectable artist in the world. In today’s blog, we examine the seminal work 3D Rat with Glasses and Fly.

In 3D Rat with Glasses and Fly we see a stylised rat, with beautiful grey and black tones, raised on its hindlegs admiring a swarm of flies that burst out of the image and onto the artist’s frame. The flimsy plastic glasses with their red and blue lenses use special photographs called anaglyph images, creating the illusion of depth. Here, Banksy creates the illusion of depth in the work with the fly escaping from the background of the board onto the foreground of the frame.

Indeed, the Sundance works, or even Banksy’s other street art, can be seen as advertisements for the artist. Here we see a clever cat and mouse as the artist wrestles with the desire to create and to share his vision of and with the world whilst bringing the works to the attention of the public and promoting the film. The works themselves, in Utah, becoming the new trailers ahead of the premiere of “Exit Through The Gift Shop”.