Guerilla Art in London

The London art market is exploding and not just in the posh galleries of Cork Street. Such was the success of the guerilla gallery, Santa’s Ghetto, with work by the likes of graffiti artists Banksy and Jamie Hewlett, creator of virtual pop band Gorillaz and Tank Girl, that punters had to line up outside. Proclaiming itself, “The gallery of the great unwashed,” Santa’s Ghetto popped up for just three weeks a year last December although the British Prime Minister Tony Blair might have preferred it didn’t, given a rather unflattering photomontage of him snapping the destruction in Iraq on his mobile phone.