Exit Through The Gift Shop (15)

They were praying for prey, an activity with which art has been associated ever since by picturing people's aspirations and identifying the rites of the tribe. Modern graffiti has a similar function for gangs

To counterpose graffiti with art is a deliberate obfuscation, used to justify ignorance. This is especially so if images are offensive to public propriety or a crime to private property. Some are, some aren't.

And it this arena which defines Banksy, the pseudonymous artist who is credited with producing pictorial posers that have intrigued the public ever since he started tagging in 1992.

Usually spray-painted using a stencil his images satirise issues inspired by the absurdities of the system with notable humour, many of them being destroyed by councils who consider them graffiti.

They're often iconoclastic and surreal, including tributes to the working class, attacks on CCTV snoopers and a courageous criticism of Israel's abominable wall.

After graduating to the galleries, Banksy has now moved into film-making and employed a crew to create a work that attacks elitism and manipulative marketing. He even sets himself up as an Aunt Sally to be knocked down.

Unsurprisingly, he decided to point up the nonsense of film premieres by having critics attend a mock-up of a flea pit-cum-freak show under Waterloo station, surrounded by street signage of variable quality.

The film begins with a piss-take of the Pearl & Dean adverts before introducing us to Thierry Guetta, a wannabe French film-maker who's been recording street art and gets invited to document his hero.

What follows introduces us to the theatrics of the trade before setting us up for a familiar fall as his monstrous creation parodies the process of pop art that promoted much post-modern pastiche.

Obviously, Banksy is laughing all the way to the proverbial, since censorious councils have collaborated in creating a "crusader" by destroying what others consider an art of resistance.

Banksy's skill is in locating sites for his protests - even returning to renew those which have been destroyed - content in the knowledge that he's creating a controversy and promoting a political polemic.

He certainly doesn't mix his metaphors. His website simply says: "I Can't Believe You Morons Actually Buy This Shit." Quite.

About time he did an interview with the Morning Star on such topics. In secret, of course.