Latest Banksy London artwork appears
Another Bansky artwork appeared on Sunday, this time in the City of London.
The image, featuring a school of fish on a police box, was confirmed by Banksy on social media on Sunday afternoon.
It is the seventh new work from the Bristol-born graffiti artist to appear on London’s streets in the past week, all of which have featured animals.
The artwork, which appears to turn the police box into a very large fish bowl, is on Ludgate Hill, leading to St Paul’s Cathedral.
Banksy appears to have used translucent spray paint on the windows to create the design, turning the sentry box into what looks like a giant fish tank.
The artist posted an uncaptioned image of the new piece on Instagram, showing a police officer taking a photo of the artwork. It differs from his recent dark silhouette images, leading to speculation over whether it was one of his works.
After it appeared, two City of London police officers arrived to examine it before taking pictures from outside the police box. One officer said they were asked to check out the artwork after it was picked up on CCTV cameras.
Detective chief inspector Andy Spooner, of the City of London Police, said: “We are aware of criminal damage to a City of London Police box in Ludgate Hill. We are liaising with the City of London Corporation, who own the police box.”
Banksy has revealed a new animal artwork each day this week – including a goat, elephants, monkeys, a wolf, pelicans and a cat – by posting a photo of the piece on Instagram at 1pm.
Two of the artworks have been either stolen or taken down within hours of being revealed.
On Thursday, a wolf stencilled onto a satellite dish in Peckham, south London, was stolen by three hooded men who were filmed using a ladder to get to the dish before carrying it off down the street.
On Saturday, the artist’s sixth piece – a stretching cat on an empty advertising billboard – was removed from its location in Cricklewood, north-west London hours, after it was revealed.
Crowds booed as the piece was dismantled by three men, who said they had been hired by a contracting company to take down the billboard for safety reasons.
It had been due to be removed on Monday, but that was brought forward in case someone attempted to take it away themselves and make the site unsafe.
Police were also worried about onlookers walking onto the street to look at the artwork, and had placed a board over the cat before the contractors arrived.
A police officer at the scene told the BBC the owner of the billboard had said he would donate it to an art gallery.
People have taken to social media to speculate on the meaning of Bansky’s new artworks, with some claiming he is attempting to inject some fun into a summer that has been dominated by civil unrest in Britain. Others said it was just light entertainment.
The animal-themed series started with a precariously perched goat near Kew Bridge on Monday.
On Tuesday, the artist added silhouettes of two elephants with their trunks stretched towards each other on the side of a building in Chelsea, west London.
This was followed by three swinging monkeys underneath a bridge over Brick Lane, east London, then the wolf in Peckham on Thursday.
The fifth design, of pelicans pinching fish from a fish and chips shop sign in Walthamstow, north-east London, was revealed on Friday.
Bansky’s support organisation, Pest Control Office, played down any deeper meaning to the new artworks, telling The Independent they had been created with the hope to highlight humans’ capacity for play rather than destruction.
The group said it had nothing to do with the theft of the satellite dish in Peckham.