One of Banksy’s most famous images, Laugh Now was originally commissioned by the Ocean Rooms nightclub in Brighton. First spray as a huge, six-metre long mural, the original work showed the image of the monkey repeated to create a line as the backdrop to the bar. Standing upright, shoulders sloped with its head hanging down, perhaps beaten into conformity, “Laugh now but one day we’ll be in charge” greets us with the evolutionary counterpoint to our concept of being human; the monkey. Nature is placed secondary to humanity as evidence of ourselves imprinted in the work through the stencil board and writing, whilst the monkey, and by extension nature, is pushed to the background and serves as a mere item on which we place our superiority and dominance over all species. Laugh Now is both provocative and comedic and the contradictory phrase is executed with typical Banksy aplomb. The mysterious text on the board suggests that the monkey is in the cusp of a revolution and ready to take control – a Planet of the Apes reference perhaps??