BANKSY has struck again with a new animal-themed artwork in central London.
The fish-themed art is the seventh new piece this week as fans flock to the site.
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Banksy appeared at a police station in London and presented a piranha swimming school.
The anonymous artist confirmed that it is his work.
Two City of London police officers went to examine Banksy after he was captured on CCTV cameras.
The elusive street artist is behind several animal-inspired artworks across the capital.
A photographer who visited all of Banksy’s artwork this week – except for the satellite dish which was removed – said he believes the animals are a message from the artist that the city has “turned into a zoo”.
Avi Yasitli, 63, said: “We can interpret this in many ways, my interpretation is ‘you are just wild animals and this place has turned into a zoo’.
“None of the animals are really pets.”
He added that he would love to see Banksy continue revealing art next week, but he thinks “that’s it.”
The City of London’s governing body said it is working on options to “preserve” a new Banksy artwork that has appeared in a police box.
A spokesperson for the City of London Corporation said in a statement to the PA news agency: “We are aware of the works at the City of London police box in Ludgate Hill.
“We are currently working on options to preserve the artwork.”
It comes after one of his pieces was destroyed just hours after being unveiled.
The piece was on a worn-out, empty advertising hoarding in Cricklewood, north-west London, depicting the silhouette of a cat stretched out with its tail facing up.
Men who said they were “hired” by a “contracting company” showed up to remove the panel for security reasons.
A contractor, who only wanted to be identified as Marc, said he would remove the board on Monday and replace it, but the removal was brought forward to Saturday in case someone “ripped it off and left it unsafe”.
He said: “We will keep this part (the artwork) in our yard to see if anyone collects it, but if not, it will go away.
“They told me to keep him careful if he wants to.”
Police cordoned off the path in front of the display as around 50 people gathered to take photos.
Several people booed twice as the two pieces of the cat were removed.
Lia Colacicco, 67, said she offered to take care of the cat artwork once it was removed.
Ben Tansley, 71, said: “If it wasn’t kept overnight someone would take it.
“There were people here this morning before it was on Instagram.”
The cat drawing was the second piece to be removed this week, after a painting of a wolf howling on a satellite dish was removed from the roof of a shop in Peckham, south London, less than an hour after it opened. .
The wolf satellite was removed by three men, according to a witness, who said he filmed them, which caused one of the men to throw his phone onto the roof.
“It’s a shame we can’t have nice things and it’s a shame it didn’t last more than an hour,” he said.
A statement from the Metropolitan Police said: “We were called to reports of a stolen satellite dish containing artwork at 1.52pm on Thursday 8 August in Rye Lane, Peckham.
“There have been no arrests. Investigations continue.”
A spokesperson for Banksy said the artist is not connected to nor endorses the theft of the wolf drawing, and that they have “no knowledge of the plate’s current whereabouts.”
The first piece of graffiti in Banksy’s new animal-themed series, announced on Monday, is near Kew Bridge in southwest London and shows a goat with rocks falling below it, just above where a CCTV camera is pointed. .
On Tuesday, the artist added silhouettes of two elephants with their trunks stretched toward each other on the side of a building near Chelsea, west London.
This was followed by three monkeys who appeared to be swinging under a bridge over Brick Lane, near a vintage clothing store on the popular east London shopping street, not far from Shoreditch High Street.
The fifth drawing, of pelicans snacking on fish from a sign at a London snack shop in Walthamstow, east London, was unveiled on Friday.
Who is Banksy?
Banksy was first noticed for spray-painting trains and walls in his hometown of Bristol in the early 1990s.
Street art and graffiti can be considered criminal damage, so it is thought that the artist remained anonymous to avoid problems with the law.
At first his pieces were created mainly in Bristol, but in the 2000s his works began to appear across the UK and other parts of the world.
Banksy chose to use stencils to create his pieces, probably because it was a quicker way to paint.
He was influenced in his early days by a French graffiti artist named Blek le Rat.
Blek le Rat is considered the father of stencil graffiti and people sometimes confuse the two artists’ work.
Banksy doesn’t just make street art – he has produced drawings, paintings and installations.
The anonymous artist no longer sells photographs or reproductions of his street graffiti.
But his public “installations” are regularly resold, often even removing the wall on which they were painted.
He also created his own theme park called Dismaland.
Banksy left his memorable mark across the world, but was most prolific in the UK.
The guerrilla artist is known for having created more than 120 works over three decades.
- In 2002, There is Always Hope – possibly the artist’s most famous work – appeared on London’s South Bank.
- Devolved Parliament, Banksy’s 13ft-wide painting of chimpanzees in the House of Commons, made headlines in October 2019 when it sold at auction for £9.9 million.
- Government spy phone box GCHQ was created in April 2014. The piece in Cheltenham shows three men wearing sunglasses and listening devices to snoop around a phone box.
- In May 2020, Banksy revealed a new Game Changer artwork, which was painted on the wall of a ward at Southampton General Hospital in Hampshire.
- On July 14, 2020, Banksy returned to the London Underground with a work encouraging people to wear masks. The work, called If You Don’t Mask, You Don’t Get, features a series of mice in pandemic-inspired poses, wearing face masks – but has been removed by cleaning products.
- In October 2020, a Banksy mural appeared on the side of a building on Rothesay Avenue in Nottingham. The artwork shows a girl hula hooping with a bicycle tire. The mural was removed and sold to an Essex art gallery, disappointing local people who had hoped it would remain in the town.
- In December 2020, a Covid-inspired Banksy mural showing a woman sneezing through her dentures on the side of a semi-detached house appeared on the side of a house in Bristol.
- In March 2020, Banksy confirmed that an image showing a prisoner escaping from a former Reading prison with a typewriter at the bottom of a “rope” made from strung together sheets of paper was one of his works.
- In November 2022, Banksy made his mark in Ukraine by unveiling a painting of a gymnast on the side of a building bombed by Russia.
- In February 2023, a new Banksy piece was confirmed after artwork showing an injured woman pushing a man into a freezer appeared on the side of a building in Margate, Kent. The image showed a 1950s housewife in an apron and dishwashing gloves. a closer look revealed that the woman had a swollen eye and was missing a tooth. The artwork also incorporated a freezer – believed to have been purposely placed against the wall – and a man’s legs sticking out as she closed the lid.
- In December 2023, a new Banksy artwork was removed from a south London street less than an hour after it was confirmed to be a genuine installation. The artist confirmed that the artwork — a road sign covered in three aircraft said to resemble military drones — was his in a social media post shortly after noon.
- In March 2024, a new Banksy tree mural was painted on the side of a house in London. However, two days later, images showed two stripes of white paint covering the green artwork.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
