London has been been blessed with new Banksy street art creation every day for the past 9 days.   Call it the urban jungle, the Banksy zoo, the London Banksy safari, whatever you like, Banksy has treated London to a version of his notorious October 2013 Better Out Than In 30 day New York residency.  Fans and media had been baffled by a daily expanding menagerie of animals scattered across London but with the 9^th and final creation, a gorilla orchestrating a mass breakout through a shutter on London Zoo, see above, the story acquired coherence.

All images Dave Stuart except where noted

The first stencil showed a precariously balanced Mountain IBEX on a crumbling buttress, the Banksy magic being present in the placement, the imaginative use of the building structure, the comic surrealism of this happening in barely above sea level Kew and the perennial intrigue of how did he do it.  Release of CCTV footage from that camera on the wall gave us a big insight into Banksy’s use of a cherry picker.  By the way, the CCTV camera position in the photo below is after it was reset by the building occupants.

Then a pair of elephants reaching out to each other arrived the next day in Chelsea.  Curiously the painting technique in the first two images was uncharacteristically flat though some uninvited collaborator has since sorted that by giving the elephants some white stripes (not witnessed through my lens yet!)

 

All this excitement occurred 3 years to the week since Banksy took his post lockdown Spraycation to East Anglia in 2021, perhaps it’s the time Banksy books for his holidays, or could it be it’s the rest of the year is holiday and this is when he clocks on for work?

Next day came three monkeys swinging across a bridge in Brick Lane spraypainted with variations in the paintwork giving a more typical Banksy detail.   Brick Lane is swinging, so are the monkeys into the trees, amazing placement and it seems he must have set up fake bridge repairs in the middle of Brick Lane to use that cherrypicker again, wow.

Day 4, a howling wolf in Peckham silhouetted against a full moon was stolen within a couple of hours, much like the STOP sign Banksy subverted in Peckham last year.   The image of the wolf howling to a full moon really required night time viewing, thanks to those opportunist thieves the world has only Banksy’s own photos to enjoy that effect to the full.  Sometimes it seems Banksy likes having the only photos (London 2012 Olympics javelin thrower, “Morning Is Broken”, Herne Bay 2023).

A long haul on the bike out to Walthamstow was required on day 5 to locate a pair of pelicans eating the fish from a chip shop sign.  Witty subversion is the takeaway (boom boom).

The Cricklewood Cat painted on a damaged disused billboard developed into a rather interesting story with the piece firstly being attacked by a member of the public with a hammer, then a contractor turning up to remove the billboard on behalf of the owner was blocked by people sequestering his ladder turning into a real “we shall not, we shall not be moved” standoff ended by 4 police cars and a riot van!   No longer on the streets.

Placing Xs on a map of London where Banksy had now done his stencils made it easy to speculate that the 7^th and supposedly final one according to the Guardian, would be either central or in deep South East London.  Sure enough, right in the heart of the City of London financial district a fish tank of piranhas appeared using a hitherto unseen mixed painting technique.  The illusion of a fish filled tank was superb and the technique, unlike the tank, remains unclear.  This lasted 2 days before being purloined and rehoused by the City Of London Corporation aka the council, this can at time of writing be seen in Guildhall Yard, City of London.

The placement on police property was deliciously provocative and the preservation of this art gives Banksy a previously unimaginable privilege of police protection, what’s the opposite of “Most wanted”?

After knowing press reports that there would be just 7 images, it was a surprise and yet perhaps no surprise – never impose your expectations on Banksy – when reports of an 8^th surfaced on Monday 12^th August.  On an industrial estate in Charlton, deepest South East London a rhino has literally and metaphorically got the horn for a grey car with a cone on the bonnet.   This was so cleverly staged with the rear wheels of the jalopy deflated so the car appears to be buckling under the weight of the amorous mount.  Defaced early evening of 12^th and at time of writing on 13^th rumours are that the car has been towed/stolen (delete according to your conspiracy appetite).

The final London Zoo piece brought the threads of the story together and authoritatively put the lid on some of the wilder ruminations on meaning.  The king of the jungle, itself perhaps an allegorical reference to Banksy, lifts the zoo shutter allowing a sea lion and an assorted birds including a humming bird and a bird of paradise to escape while unidentified creatures peer out on freedom.

The Zoo has taken its lead from the line put out by the media at the weekend that Banksy’s whole point was simply to cheer people up, certainly zoo staff were all very positive about their Banksy Great Escape. Staff advised that their stock take is done in January which may mean escapees have a considerable time before they will be missed, the zoo does have baby gorillas but a request they be brought out for the photo op was declined, it seemed the humans didn’t want the competition.

The idea of animals in captivity orchestrating their escape certainly has potential for a darker and more Banksy-esque interpretation. The artwork includes a nice nod to his 2006 Camden Maid aka “Sweeping it under the carpet” painted in nearby Chalk Farm.

If this is to be the last then London won’t have numerically matched the 29 street art pieces Banksy blessed New York with in 2013 but in terms of the coherence of the theme and to pull that off across 9 street art pieces without missing a beat is an amazing achievement.

It is also evident that CCTV no longer holds the terror for street artists that it may have done 20 years ago with several of Banksy’s pieces being done in the full beady gaze of the CCTV camera.  Indeed in the case of the Ibex goat the word from the property owner is that the CCTC captured Banksy repositioning the camera to face directly at the goat, so the camera is component of the artwork.

Is this zoo animal themed street exhibition done?  Would it be a surprise if that escaping sea lion turned up on the nearby Regents Canal?  Banksy certainly knows a few spots along there.

All images Dave Stuart except where noted