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A large wall mural by “guerrilla artist” Banksy has been mistakenly painted over by a council’s graffiti-removal contractors.
The valuable 25ft-long artwork, on the side of garages in Bristol, was covered with a coat of thick black paint
Usually when a piece of graffiti is removed from a street, the residents are only too delighted to see the back of it. But when the urban painting is by “guerrilla artist” Banksy, it’s a different matter.
Several years ago, when he was unknown, Banksy stencilled a black silhouette image of a rat bouncing a beach ball beneath a “No Ball Games” sign on a wall in Gloucester Gardens, Paddington. As his fame grew, the witty painting became a popular local landmark.
Santa rechristened as Satan, holding a placard stating: “It’s cancelled” and a Michael Jackson lookalike in a reworked drawing of Hansel and Gretel…
It can only be guerrilla artist Banksy’s Santa’s Ghetto, an art gallery opening in Oxford Street today.
The elephant may have been in the room, but by the end of its stay it had lost its sheen.
Tai, the 38-year-old painted pachyderm that was the centrepiece of the first major US show by the British graffiti artist Banksy, has been scrubbed down on the orders of the Los Angeles department of animal services.
People look on at Banksy’s artwork in Disneyland
Graffiti artist Banksy has struck again, this time erecting a life-size sculpture of a Guantanamo Bay inmate at Disneyland.
Families visiting the Los Angeles theme park saw a jarring figure — dressed in an orange jumpsuit with its hands and feet manacled — beside the Rocky Mountain Railroad ride.
Last week Banksy, who calls himself a “guerrilla artist”, hit out at hotel heiress Paris Hilton.
He tampered with hundreds of her new albums in music stores, replacing her CD with his own remixes and giving the tracks titles such as Why Am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For?
He also changed pictures of her on the sleeve to show her topless and with a dog’s head. His Disneyland piece was made out of an inflatable doll with a black hood.
It poked fun at the controversial detention of hundreds of terror suspects at the American naval base in Cuba.
Amnesty International has blasted the prison as a “human rights scandal”.
The Disneyland sculpture remained in place for one and a half hours before it was spotted.
The ride was then shut down and the doll removed.
Graffiti artist Banksy has returned to his home town and left his mark on a Bristol building with a stencil design.
The painting, on the side of a building near Park Street, depicts a naked lover caught with his pants down, hanging from a window ledge.
The city council, whose offices overlook the artwork, said it will ask the public whether or not to clean off the mural or paint over it.
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