THIS is the moment one of Banksy’s latest masterpieces is removed by council workers in high-vis jackets.
Disappointed spectators watched as the artist’s seventh piece in as many days was transported near St Paul’s Cathedral in London’s Ludgate Hill.
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The blue fish, housed in a police box, look like a school of piranhas swimming in a tank.
A video clip shared on TikTok shows men in high-visibility suits and helmets removing the structure and placing it on a tow truck.
A worker in the area told The Sun: “There was a buzz in the police box during the day and at night too.
“People were still taking photos of the place after it disappeared.
“It is a shame that a small piece of joy for so many has been taken away. Anyway, I never saw cops in that box.
“You better turn this into something memorable and fun.”
A spokesperson for the City of London Corporation said: “We have moved the artwork to Guildhall Yard to ensure it is properly protected and open for the public to view safely.
“A permanent location for the piece will be decided in due course.”
Devastated fans rushed to the comments to share their compassion for the mysterious street artist.
“I feel so bad for Banksy. Imagine having to sit on the sidelines and watch your art be taken away like this, taken away from its purpose of being seen and admired by a normal person,” wrote one.
“Why wouldn’t they let people admire that?” agreed another.
A third added: “Why can’t we just admire this art, why does it have to be taken and sold to the highest bidder?”
The animal-themed work is part of a collection of eight, which includes a goat, elephants, monkeys, a wolf, pelicans, a cat and a rhino, spread across the capital.
It comes after the wolf, on a satellite dish, was taken by would-be thieves.
The work 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.”
Meanwhile, the stretched-out cat, painted on a blank billboard, was stolen by contractors who warned it could end up jumping.
Men who said they were “hired” by a “contracting company” showed up to remove the panel for supposed 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.”
A photographer who visited all of Banksy’s artworks this week – except the “stolen” wolf – 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.”
The first piece of graffiti in Banksy’s animal-themed series, announced on Monday, is near Kew Bridge in southwest London.
It 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 that appeared to be swinging under a bridge over Brick Lane.
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 closes the lid on it.
- 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.
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