ONLOOKERS booed as a Banksy artwork was ripped down just hours after its unveiling – with locals furious.
The new work on an empty, distressed advertising hoarding in Cricklewood, northwest London, depicts a stretching cat with an upturned tail in silhouette.
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The elusive street artist confirmed he was behind the piece by posting a photo on Instagram earlier today.
But hours later men who said they were “hired” from a “contracting company” turned up to take the hoarding down for safety reasons.
A contractor, who only wanted to give his name as Marc, said they were going to pull the boarding down on Monday and replace it, but the removal had been brought forward to Saturday in case someone “rips it down and leaves it unsafe”.
He said: “We’ll store that bit (the artwork) in our yard to see if anyone collects it but if not it’ll go in a skip.
“I’ve been told to keep it careful in case he wants it.”
Police taped off the path in front of the hoarding as about 50 people gathered to take pictures.
The artwork is the sixth to be unveiled by the Bristol-based artist this week in London, in what appears to be a new animal-themed collection, after he previously unveiled a goat, elephants, monkeys, a wolf and pelicans.
The owner of the billboard has since told police he will donate it to an art gallery, a police officer at the scene later said.
Contractors resumed bringing down the billboard after a pause while officers checked the workers were approved to do so.
A black board was used to cover the majority of the cat on the billboard at the request of the police, who wanted to stop people walking in the road in front of traffic.
A crowd of about 50 people, including a number of journalists, watched as three contractors stood within the police cordon.
A number of people booed twice as the two pieces of the cat were removed.
One man drew the cat on a notepad as police tried to stop people from standing in the road with cars passing.
The cat design is the second piece this week to be removed, after a painting of a wolf howling on a satellite dish was taken off the roof of a shop in Peckham, south London, less than an hour after it was unveiled.
Lia Colacicco, 67, said she offered to look after the cat artwork once it was taken down.
Ms Colacicco and two other members of the North West Two Residents Association watched as contractors started to remove it.
Ben Tansley, 71, said: “If it wasn’t guarded overnight somebody would take it. It’s such a shame.
“There were people here this morning before it was on Instagram.”
Chairwoman of the association Carol Reeman, 64, said: “This is Cricklewood, this is our Banksy. You can’t even enjoy it for the whole day before someone wanted to take it down.
“You would wait for a lifetime for a Banksy to come into our neighbourhood. Cricklewood’s on the map.”
Josette Gerlier, 79, came from Kensington to see the artwork, as she has travelled to see all the other pieces this week, except the wolf in Peckham, south London, which was removed before she could see it.
She described the removal of the billboard artwork in Cricklewood as “madness” as the contractors began.
She said: “It would be lovely to keep it, they could stop people walking on the path, but I know it’s a very busy road.
“The whole situation is madness.”
The wolf satellite was removed by three men, according to a witness, who said he filmed them, which led to one of the men throwing his phone on a roof.
“It’s a great shame we can’t have nice things and it’s a shame it couldn’t have lasted 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 August 8 in Rye Lane, Peckham.
Secret code hidden in Banksy artworks
An expert claims the secret codes hidden in Banksy’s new artworks could be clues about the mystery artist’s plans for the future.
Expert Jay Tomkins, 52, who runs the popular Facebook group Banksy Locations, thinks the series of animal murals reveals a hidden pattern that could point to Banksy’s next move—or even his retirement.
He said: “It’s just my perspective, but numbers are definitely a factor in all of his recent work.”
Speaking after the unveiling of the first five murals – one gazelle, two elephants, three monkeys, one wolf, and now two pelicans – Tomkins said he believes Banksy is playing a “waltz-like” game, each piece a step closer to what could be his final bow.
He mused: “Could this be Banksy’s last waltz”, suggesting that the artist, who is rumoured to have turned 50 this year, might be marking the occasion with a cryptic farewell.
“There have been no arrests. Inquiries continue.”
A spokesman for Banksy said the artist is neither connected to nor endorses the theft of the wolf design, and that they have “no knowledge as to the dish’s current whereabouts”.
The first piece of graffiti in Banksy’s new animal-themed series, which was announced on Monday, is near Kew Bridge in southwest London and shows a goat with rocks falling down below it, just above where a CCTV camera is pointed.
On Tuesday the artist added silhouettes of two elephants with their trunks stretched towards each other on the side of a building near Chelsea, west London.
This was followed by three monkeys looking as though they were swinging underneath a bridge over Brick Lane, near a vintage clothing shop in the popular east London market street, not far from Shoreditch High Street.
The fifth design, of pelicans pinching fish from a London chip shop sign in Walthamstow, east London, was revealed on Friday.
The Sun has contacted Brent Council for comment.
Who is Banksy?
Banksy first got noticed for spray-painting trains and walls in his home city of Bristol during the early 1990s.
Street art and graffiti can be considered criminal damage so it’s thought the artist stayed anonymous to avoid a run-in with the law.
In the beginning, his pieces were mainly created in Bristol, but in the 2000s his artworks started appearing all over the UK and other parts of the world.
Banksy chose to use stencils to create his pieces, probably because it’s a faster way to paint.
He was influenced in his early days by a French graffiti artist called Blek le Rat.
Blek le Rat is considered to be the father of stencil graffiti and people sometimes confuse the work of the two artists.
Banksy doesn’t only do street art – he has produced drawings, paintings and installation pieces.
The anonymous artist no longer sells photographs or reproductions of his street graffiti.
But his public “installations” are regularly resold, often even by removing the wall they were painted on.
He has also created his own theme park called Dismaland.
Banksy has left his memorable mark all over the world but has been most prolific in the UK.
The guerrilla artist is known to have created more than 120 works spanning three decades.
- In 2002, There is Always Hope – possibly the artist’s most famous work – appeared on the South Bank in London.
- Devolved Parliament, Banksy’s 13ft wide painting of chimpanzees in the House of Commons, hit the headlines in October 2019 when it sold at auction for £9.9million.
- GCHQ Government Spies Telephone Box was created in April 2014. The piece in Cheltenham shows three men wearing sunglasses and using listening devices to snoop on a phone box.
- In May 2020, Banksy unveiled new artwork Game Changer, 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 face masks. The work, called If You Don’t Mask, You Don’t Get, features a number of rats in pandemic-inspired poses, wearing face masks – but it was scrubbed off by cleaners.
- In October 2020, a Banksy mural appeared on the side of a building in Rothesay Avenue in Nottingham. The artwork shows a girl hula-hooping with a bicycle tyre. The mural has now been removed and sold to an Essex art gallery, disappointing local people who had hoped it would stay in the city.
- In December 2020, a Covid-inspired Banksy mural of a woman sneezing out her dentures on the side of a semi-detached home popped up on the side of a house in Bristol.
- In March 2020, Banksy confirmed an image showing a prisoner escaping from a former Reading Prison with a typewriter at the bottom of a “rope” made out of sheets of paper knotted together, was one of his works.
- In November 2022, Banksy has made his mark in Ukraine after unveiling a painting of a gymnast on the side of a tower block bombed by Russia.
- In February 2023, a new Banksy piece was confirmed after artwork showing a bruised woman pushing a man into a freezer appeared on the side of a building in Margate, Kent. The image depicted a 1950s housewife in an apron and washing-up gloves. a closer look revealed the woman had a swollen eye and a missing tooth. The artwork also incorporated a freezer – believed to have been placed up against the wall purposely – and a man’s legs sticking out as she closes the lid on him.
- 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 the artwork – a traffic stop sign covered with three aircraft said to resemble military drones – was his in a social media post shortly after midday.
- In March 2024, a new Banksy tree mural was sprayed on the side of a home in London. However, two days later images showed two streaks of white paint covering the green artwork.
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