A London council has moved swiftly to protect one of Banksy’s animal artworks from becoming an endangered species.
Over nine days in August, the anonymous graffiti artist went on an animal spraying spree, stenciling black creatures on walls across the English capital. On the second day, Banksy spray-painted a pair of elephants reaching out to touch one another on the covered-over windows of a house in Chelsea, southwest London.
The work was defaced with the addition of white stripes marking one of the elephants and the Kensington and Chelsea Council has responded by correcting the image and adding an anti-graffiti solution to the work.
The solution is designed to protect but not alter the surface it is applied to. Josh Rendall, a councilor for the ward in which the graffiti is located, said the elephants had been restored to their former glory. “It was disappointing when the [elephants] were painted over,” Rendall said. “We were delighted to discover Banksy had come back to Kensington and Chelsea to add another unique piece to our borough’s rich cultural landscape.” In 2008, Banksy sprayed a work known as The Painter on Portobello Road in the north of borough—another work in the area, Made You Look, has never been confirmed as a Banksy.
A Banksy work spray painted on a wall on Portobello road in London in 2008. Photo: Carl De Souza via Getty Images.
In a characteristically sudden and unexplained run in early August, Banksy grabbed London’s attention by painting animals across the city. The series began with a mountain goat perched on a ledge in Richmond, southwest London. It included monkeys hanging from a railway track, pelicans loitering above a fish and chip shop, a wolf howling on a satellite dish, the silhouette of a cat painted on a billboard, and piranhas on a police sentry box. The final work in the series, sprayed on the shutters of Regent’s Park Zoo, depicted a gorilla letting various animals escape.
A mural of a gorilla freeing animals adorns a wall at London Zoo on August 13, 2024 in London, England. Photo: Leon Neal/Getty Images.
While the artist offered no explanation on the meaning of the works, it’s known Banksy has been supportive of animal welfare in the past. In 2001, Greenpeace commissioned Banksy to make a work called Save or Delete that highlighted the ill effects of deforestation by recasting characters from Disney’s Jungle Book as bound, blindfolded, and heading for execution. At the same time, Banksy’s studio said one aim was simply “to cheer people with a moment of unexpected amusement.”
Unlike the Banksy work in Kensington and Chelsea, not all of the animal paintings have been protected. The satellite dish wolf in Peckham, southeast London, was stolen, and two others, the piranhas and cat, were removed by local authorities for reasons of safety. The gorilla was removed from the zoo “for safe keeping.”