STOT21stCplanB started out as a zero-ambition noise/alt-country rock band, releasing the nihilistic CDR only LP Satan’s Rat Trap and the Mouse that Wound Up Dead (2004) and the flood/love/disaster themed mini-LP Up To Yer Neck In It (2005), before turning attentions towards visual art disruption.
Describing themselves as Neo-Nothingist Anartists, three years of intense creativity followed: exploring and dealing with notions of “the puerile”, where the duo worked in a multiplicity of mediums from photo-montage, printmaking, painting, to political campaigning, crockery and making fake Banksy’s as subversive mockery under the name Not Banksy.
In 2008 L-13 (then known as THE AQUARIUM L-13) hosted a fundraising event for Ken Livingstone’s mayoral campaign. STOT21stCplanB declared they would stand against him and put forward their own candidate known only as THE ASSISTANT. Despite designing some fantastic campaign posters they failed to get to the first stage of the elections and in bitter disappointment declared semi-retirement at the end of 2008.
The next 13 years were spent mostly painting landscapes and scenes of religious violence under the name Harry Adams, emerging occasionally for one-off projects and eventually succumbing to popular demand by re-activating the Not Banksy project in 2018.
Making and selling Not Banksy’s kept them very busy for several more years, culminating in the publication of a memoir: The Not Banksy Book: Lying, Cheating, Stealing and the Death of Art Vol 13, L-13 Press 2021 (aka The Lob-a-Knob Book).
Currently STOT21stCPlanB have turned their attentions to mining, reimagining and remaking some of their past masterworks, but done better this time. Some of these have been exhibited at their gallery The Black Cube which they operate at a secret location on Fish Island.
The rest will be history.
STOT21.com
BlackCubeGallery.com
