First appearing stencilled onto the side of a house in Bristol (long thought to be the hometown of the secretive artist) ‘Barcode’ has become one of the most sought after of all Banksy artworks.

Much like in many of his early prints, the artist uses a monochrome to further emphasise the subject. In Barcode, a leopard emerges onto the foreground of the sheet appearing to break free from the confines of a cage on wheels that resembles a barcode, its bars bent by the powerful creature. Menacingly emerging towards the viewer, the organic matter of the leopard is juxtaposed with the digital, ethereal world of barcodes (like Neo escaping the Matrix) as nature fights from man’s attempt to contain it. Or are we the leopard in the work?

Captured and shackled by our digital world as we strive to break free? There is beauty and danger here, confronting the viewer directly as we fall in its line of sight of the exotic beast. Banksy at his best with a flourish and a twist wrapped up in a seemingly simple image.