Banksy Appears Near Kew Gardens" width="970" height="647" data-caption='The goat in Richmond was the first of Banksy’s new works to appear in London. <span class="media-credit">Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images</span>'>
World-famous but still-anonymous street artist Banksy was recently active in London, applying more of their signature stencils to walls, windows and assorted infrastructure around the city. Over nine days, they added nine animals to the urban landscape—one per day—before posting photos of each new creature to Instagram without comment. The growing menagerie prompted not only gleeful scavenger hunting by dedicated fans of the artist hoping to be first to find the day’s new animal but also wild speculation about what message Banksy might be trying to convey with the project. Perhaps solidarity with Palestine? Or a commentary on man’s impact on nature? Midway through the street art spree, however, Banksy’s Pest Control Office reportedly told the Guardian that people were reading too much into the whimsical yet recondite renderings of animals.
Those still hoping to find deeper meaning in Banksy’s graffito zoo should go and check out what they can while they can. Protecting Banksy artworks, which are both exposed to the elements and accessible to the public, can be logistically challenging as well as expensive, leading some property owners whose buildings have been “Banksied” to excise the artwork for storage or sale or to simply paint over it (as a way to avoid any hassle or expense). Of the nine Banksy animals in London, only seven are still on display, and two of the works that remain have been defaced while a third is slated to be removed for preservation.
Now that the artist’s animal farm seems to be complete, here’s take a look at the status of all nine.
Many have theorized that the goat on a wall near Kew Bridge in Richmond in southwest London is actually Palestine’s national animal, the mountain gazelle. Banksy has previously shown support for the people of Gaza, painting murals on the Palestinian side of the West Bank Wall since the early 2000s. Whatever the significance of this work, it’s still there and has since been covered with a plastic shield and frame—a common mode of protecting Banksy art, which is often the target of vandalism. A stencil of a rat with a cocktail the artist applied during their “Great British Staycation” was painted over just 48 hours after it was first discovered on a wall in Lowestoft, Suffolk.
Banksy’s second work featured two elephant silhouettes framed by windows, reaching their trunks toward each other on the corner of a house in Chelsea in southwest London. They’re still there but have since been defaced with white stripes. Banksy work often attracts the attention of rival graffiti artists—in 2021, a mural located on a former Reading prison was defaced with the words “Team Robbo,” a reference to the late graffiti artist King Robbo, who is known to have had a long-running feud with Banksy.
Banksy’s monkeys on a railway bridge on Brick Lane in east London near Shoreditch High Street Station are probably the least likely to be defaced in the short term, given their relative inaccessibility.
Banksy’s fourth animal was a single wolf silhouetted on a white moon-like satellite dish installed on the roof of an empty storefront in Peckham in southeast London. Fans and photographers managed to document the work, but just hours after the paint was applied, two masked thieves scaled the building, disconnected the dish and handed it to a third man, who ran off with it. Several people chased the thieves and London’s Metropolitan Police got involved, but a spokesperson for Banksy later told the PA news agency they had “no knowledge as to the dish’s whereabouts.” The artist’s smaller-scale works are known to attract thieves: when Banksy painted three military drones on a Peckham stop sign in 2023, it was cut down less than an hour after the work was confirmed as genuine.
Bonners Fish Bar, a fish and chip shop in Walthamstow in northeast London, has gotten a lot of attention since Banksy updated its signage with a pair of thieving pelicans. So proud to have a @banksy on the side of our shop! Thank you for choosing us, and Walthamstow to showcase your talent,” the shop said on Instagram. In another post, it added, “We are in constant contact with the Waltham Forest council to keep it looked after and to get the artwork protected long term.” There’s currently a security team keeping watch over the site until some kind of protective barrier can be installed.
This is one of the Banksy animals no longer on view. Shortly after the stencil on an empty distressed wooden billboard on Edgware Road in Cricklewood in northwest London was discovered, police taped off the sidewalk in front of it. The crowd that assembled around the barriers was soon dismayed to see a crew dismantling the billboard, albeit carefully. Booing reportedly ensued, though a police officer on the scene told the PA news agency that the billboard was scheduled to be taken down before the painting went up and its unnamed owner has pledged to put the work in an art gallery.
The school of swimming piranhas that showed up on a police sentry box near the Central Criminal Court in Ludgate Hill in central London sat in situ for days, surrounded by police barriers. It has since been temporarily moved to Guildhall Yar–a 15-minute walk from its original location. “We have moved the artwork… to ensure it is properly protected and open for the public to view safely,” the City of London Corporation said in a statement. “A permanent home for the piece will be decided in due course.”
This Banksy animal attracted a lot of attention for its subtle salaciousness and visual punnery, but the silver Nissan Micra parked next to the Westmoor Street wall has since been towed away by an unknown party (the local council reportedly confirmed it wasn’t them). Later on, an as-of-yet unidentified man in a balaclava was filmed brazenly tagging the rhinoceros while the gathered crowd shouted at him to stop. The horny mammal, now tagged with a dollar sign and a “V” (not to mention deprived of the object of its passion), is still there for fans of the artist to enjoy and will be protected by a perspex screen.
The last, but not the least, of Banksy’s animals can be found outside London Zoo in Camden in north London. The mural on the shutter protecting the zoo’s main entrance on Regents Park’s Outer Circle shows a life-sized gorilla lifting the metal shutter to let the captive animals—first among them, a sea lion and birds—escape. It will be on view through the evening of August 16, after which it will be removed from public display, according to statements released by the zoo. “We’re removing the artwork from the main entrance in order to best care for it while plans are made for its future,” reads a statement on the zoo’s website. “This has become a significant moment in our history that we’re keen to properly preserve.” The London Zoo added that it is “working on plans to preserve the artwork so as many people can enjoy it as possible in the future.”
Hopefully, the seven remaining Banksy animals will be gently preserved and accessible to the public, as per the artist’s oft-stated wishes. “Graffiti art has a hard enough life as it is, before you add hedge-fund managers wanting to chop it out and hang it over the fireplace,” Banksy said in a 2013 statement issued via a publicist prior to an auction featuring their work. “For the sake of keeping all street art where it belongs, I’d encourage people not to buy anything by anybody, unless it was created for sale in the first place.”
