2024-08-17 23:32:36
After murals of goats, elephants, monkeys, a wolf, pelicans and a cat, came piranhas and, most recently, a rhinoceros this Monday. The well-known British street art artist Banksy has already created eight works with animal motifs in the last eight days in London. Many wonder what the notoriously secretive artist is up to with this series.
The first to appear on the wall of a building in the London Borough of Richmond last week was a goat sprayed as if it were standing on the edge of a cliff with rocks falling from its hooves. The work was created in Banksy’s typical style, sprayed over painter’s paper stencils, and the artist soon claimed its authorship without a single word via the social network Instagram.
This was followed by the silhouettes of two elephant heads stretching their trunks towards each other from the blind windows of a house in Chelsea, and three monkeys hanging from a London Underground train bridge near Brick Lane.
The fourth work, a silhouette of a howling wolf, was placed by Banksy on a satellite dish perched on the roof of a graffiti-covered shop in Peckham, South London. A few hours after he posted the photo on Instagram, police reported that someone had stolen the satellite dish. The media took pictures of an unidentified man with his face covered taking the device away. The further fate of the work is unknown.
This was followed by a scene depicting two hungry pelicans, stylishly sprayed above the entrance to a fish bistro, and as a sixth a sprawling cat. Here, the artist sprayed an empty, damaged advertising banner, which was quickly removed by construction workers. According to the ČTK agency, crowds booed as three men dismantled the work in Cricklewood. They said they were hired by a contractor to do this and that the billboard was being removed for security reasons. At the same time, people came to the place from all over London.
Last Sunday, in the center of the English capital, Banksy transformed a glass police booth, which after his intervention looks like an aquarium or a water tank in which piranhas swim.
Banksy modified police booth. | Photo: Profimedia.cz
The fish is stylistically different from the previous works, it is no longer a black silhouette, but a detailed painting, the BBC points out. According to AFP, the police confirmed that they are investigating the act as vandalism. The booth on Ludgate Hill has been standing since the 1990s, when it was installed there during a time of increased security measures against attacks by the Irish Republican Military Organization (IRA).
Banksy’s Instagram account always posts photos at one o’clock in the afternoon UK time. He did the same this Monday, when the eighth work appeared there, a rhinoceros spray-painted on a wall as if it were climbing a parked car with the rear tire deflated. Located on Westmoor Street, it is Banksy’s eighth animal-themed work in eight days.
As AFP points out, this is an unusual pace for the British author, who sometimes creates only a few works in a year. For example, users of social networks are now even more intensively discussing what Banksy is trying to convey to the public. In the past, he expressed indirectly about war or climate change with his works.
Some speculate that Banksy is making a roundabout comment on the recent wave of unrest in Great Britain. According to others, they are trying to suggest that civilization is in decline and people are beginning to behave like animals.
The three monkeys hanging on the bridge reminded someone of the Japanese saying “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil”, even though none of Banksy’s are covering their eyes, ears or mouth.
The British Sunday Observer claims that Banksy’s goal this time is simply to cheer up the public in a gloomy time when good news is harder to see than before. “He hopes that the uplifting works will cheer people up, bring them a brief relief and gently underline that in addition to destruction and negativity, man is also capable of creative activity,” wrote the Observer without citing the source.
Banksy has strictly guarded his identity for decades. Last year, the British BBC found an old interview in the archives in which the artist claims that his first name is Robbie. However, this may not be true.
The artist became famous in the early 1990s as the author of graffiti on walls, trains and subways in Bristol. During the following years, his works appeared in Paris, New York and other world capitals. The media often describe him as elusive or mysterious. Among his fans are also world celebrities.
His works sell for tens of millions of euros, yet he still creates his often politically engaged murals in secret. “With a team of collaborators who call him a pseudonym, he raids the world’s capitals like some kind of phantom. He arrives, selects suitable places, sprays them at night, and in the morning it’s gone. He often works in deprived neighborhoods, and when he does something for money, he donates is poor,” Aktuálně.cz described.