Crisis as Usual was released as part of Banksy’s Gross Domestic Product™ project in 2019, the satirical Croydon “homewares” shop whose name parodied Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the measure of national wealth. The store mocked consumer culture and the art market, selling objects that blurred the line between protest art and household goods.

The piece itself embodies Banksy’s bleak humour, twisting the familiar phrase “business as usual” into Crisis as Usual. In doing so, Banksy reflects on society’s normalisation of perpetual instability from political unrest and environmental collapse to economic inequality. By turning crisis into a permanent condition, the work comments on how systems of power profit from chaos, while ordinary people adapt to living in its shadow.