Banksy, the famously anonymous street artist, unveiled a new mural at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Monday. Shortly after, authorities said it would be removed.
The mural is of a judge appearing to beat a protester lying on the ground with a gavel. The protester is holding a blank sign with splattered red paint, seemingly depicting blood.
Banksy posted a photo of the work on Instagram, his usual method of claiming a work as authentic. It was captioned “Royal Courts Of Justice. London.”
Banksy / AP
Security officials outside the courthouse covered the artwork Monday with sheets of black plastic and two metal barriers, and it was being guarded by two officers and a security camera.
Because the Victorian gothic revival style building is 143 years old, the mural will be removed with consideration for its historical significance, according to HM Courts and Tribunals.
“The Royal Courts of Justice is a listed building and HMCTS are obliged to maintain its original character,” it said in a statement. Listed buildings are considered the country’s most significant historic buildings and sites and are protected by law.
While the artwork doesn’t refer to a particular cause or incident, activists saw it as a reference to the U.K. government’s ban on the group Palestine Action. On Saturday almost 900 people were arrested at a London protest challenging the ban.
Defend Our Juries, the group that organized the protest, said in a statement on social media that the mural “powerfully depicts the brutality unleashed” by the government ban.
“When the law is used as a tool to crush civil liberties, it does not extinguish dissent, it strengthens it,” the statement said.
The courts have weighed in on the Palestine Action case, with judges initially rejecting the organization’s request to appeal its ban. A High Court court judge then allowed the appeal to go forward, though the government is now challenging that decision.
Who is Banksy?
Banksy began his career spray-painting buildings in Bristol, England, and has become one of the world’s best-known artists. His paintings and installations sell for millions of dollars at auction and have drawn thieves and vandals.
The artist’s anonymity was about avoiding problems with the police, Steve Lazarides, an early associate of Banksy’s in Bristol, told CBS News in 2023.
But people have speculated about his identity for decades — Bristol artist Robin Gunningham and Robert Del Naja, from the band Massive Attack, also from Bristol, have been raised as possibilities.
Banksy also revealed his first name as Robbie in a lost BBC interview recorded in 2003, the broadcaster said in 2023.
Banksy’s political messages
Banksy’s work often comments on political issues, with many of his pieces criticizing government policy on migration and war.
At the Glastonbury Festival last year, an inflatable raft holding dummies of migrants in life jackets was unveiled during a band’s headline set. Banksy appeared to claim the stunt, which was thought to symbolize small boat crossings of migrants in the English Channel, in a post on Instagram.
The artist has also taken his message on migration to Europe.
In 2019, “The Migrant Child,” depicting a shipwrecked child holding a pink smoke bomb and wearing a life jacket, was unveiled in Venice, Italy. In 2018, a number of works including one near a former center for migrants that depicted a child spray-painting wallpaper over a swastika were discovered in Paris.
Banksy has also created numerous artworks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the years, including one depicting a girl conducting a body search on an Israeli soldier, another showing a dove wearing a flak jacket, and a masked protester hurling a bouquet of flowers. He designed the “Walled Off Hotel” guesthouse in Bethlehem, which closed in October 2023.
Last summer, Banksy captured London’s attention with an animal-themed collection, which concluded with a mural of a gorilla appearing to hold up the entrance gate to London Zoo.
For nine days straight, Banksy-created creatures — from a mountain goat perched on a building buttress to piranhas circling a police guard post to a rhinoceros mounting a car — showed up in unlikely locations around the city.
