Banksy’s ninth animal themed work in nine days has been revealed, hours after the previous piece was defaced by a man in a balaclava.
The latest piece features a gorilla breaking animals out of London Zoo. Painted onto the security shutters, it depicts the ape freeing birds and a seal with other animals looking on from inside. The elusive artist claimed credit on Tuesday morning by posting an image of it on Instagram.
It follows a life-sized rhino, which appeared on a wall in Charlton, south-east London, mounting an abandoned Nissan Micra. A traffic cone had been placed on the bonnet of the car, making the vehicle appear to represent a second animal.
However, at around 7.45pm on Monday, a man wearing a balaclava was filmed spraying a white graffiti tag to the painted rhino before walking off to jeers from onlookers. The Nissan Micra has also since been taken away.
The zoo break follows other animals, which have appeared across the capital in the past week including a goat, two elephants, three swinging monkeys, a howling wolf, a stretching cat, pelicans and on Sunday, a shoal of piranhas painted onto the glass of a police sentry box near the Old Bailey in central London.
On Monday Judge Mark Lucraft KC discharged a jury after it failed to reach a verdict in a death by careless driving trial, and suggested the jurors might enjoy the warm weather with a visit to the nearby Banksy instead.
The sentry box has now been relocated. A spokesman for the City of London Corporation said: “We have moved the artwork to Guildhall Yard to ensure it is properly protected and open for the public to view safely.”
The Guardian reported that it had an “understanding” that the meaning of the latest animal series was designed to cheer up the public following a period when news headlines have been bleak. But the artist’s agent told the BBC that there was “no comment on the theme.”
James Peak, who presented The Banksy Story, a ten-part podcast series, told the BBC that Banksy’s animals show his trademark use of negative space, saying he’s “using the built environment as part of the art”, for “maximum impact from minimum effort”.
He added that the message behind the paintings has been left more ambiguous compared with previous works. “It’s interesting that the meaning is more hidden than usual. There’s often a message that is more clear and immediate in his work: maybe this time around he wants us to work it out for ourselves?”
