This work is a four-color screenprint on watermarked rag paper with deckle edges. The image debuted in Banksy's 2006 "Barely Legal" show in Los Angeles, but this impression comes from the smaller edition published by Pictures on Wall (POW).

Like many of Banksy's pieces, "Applause" highlights the absurdity of our approach to serious issues such as military power. The work highlights how such issues get trivialized in a world dominated by mass media, where lethal endeavors become a show.

Banksy (b. 1974) is the most famous graffiti artist to have emerged from the British Street Art scene. Banksy’s art developed out of the Bristol underground street scene in the late 1980s. Early in his career, he was heavily influenced by the work of the French artist Blek le Rat and by the members of the anarcho-punk band Crass, who ran a graffiti stencil campaign on the London Tube system in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Working primarily with spray paint and stencils, Banksy has achieved popular acclaim for his graffiti works, which often employ satirical humor and highlight social and political inequalities. The unveiling of Banksy’s new works usually incorporates pranks or performance: he has secretly added his own works to museums like the Tate Modern in London, the Louvre in Paris, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; opened gallery shows to the public with specially-bred rats running around the gallery space; and inserted an inflatable doll dressed as a Guantanamo Bay prisoner into the Disneyland theme park in California. Aside from his reactionary street art, Banksy has created works for several charities, and frequently exhibits his art. He has consistently refused to reveal his true identity, and this refusal has added considerably to his cult appeal. In 2010, Banksy’s film “Exit Through the Gift Shop” debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, and eventually was nominated for an Academy Award. Recently, he was included in the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s “Art in the Streets” group exhibit, alongside artists such as Futura 2000, Shepard Fairey, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Rammellzee. Banksy lives and works primarily in Bristol, England.