The sculpture is on display at Artmageddon, a group show at Pure Evil Gallery on Leonard Street in Shoreditch.
Banksy gifted the bouquet to Charles Uzzel Edwards, a.k.a. Pure Evil, after having suffered a personal loss in 2024. Pure Evil and Banksy’s working relationship goes way back – Pure Evil was involved with Pictures on Walls and the Santas Ghetto exhibitions. He was also one of the invited artists at the Cans Festival, a collective street art exhibition organised by Banksy in May 2008.
A new piece by Banksy was unveiled today at the Royal Courts of Justice, in the heart of London. At first glance, it looks like a version of his Crazy Hippies from Glastonbury 2010. But this time it’s a judge beating a fallen protester with his gavel while the CCTV camera is looking in the other direction. Given the piece’s location—at the UK’s highest court, in the very centre of London, surrounded by surveillance and security—one might suspect that team Banksy was in a rush to complete the work.
The artwork is most likely Banksy’s comment on the mass arrests of 890 non-violent protesters on Saturday, 6 September. BBC did a feature on the piece: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrq0r0y878o
Now we know where all the animals came from. The animal kingdom series obviously has a lot to do with the summer riots in London in the previous weeks. One can discern a stoic approach: nature is the only true force, and when you encounter adversity, face it with resilience, humour, and a charitable spirit.
The second week of the Animal Kingdom series starts with a life-size rhino mounting a Nissan Micra with a cone on the bonnet. Old-school Banksy. This is getting better every day!
The piranhas appeared on Sunday morning at a police box near St. Paul’s Cathedral, in the City of London. As expected, Banksy confirmed the piece at 1 p.m. sharp on his Instagram.
The leopard is doing the morning stretch while sharpening the claws on a scratching post. Someone might say it’s a panther, but isn’t the panther just a leopard with black fur?
Anyway, there are quite a few leopards in the Banksy imagery:
Walled Off, canvas
Banksy’s handling office, Pest Control, issued a statement on the meaning of the London series of animals:
“The artist’s vision is simple: the latest street art has been designed to cheer up the public during a period when the news headlines have been bleak, and light has often been harder to spot than shade. Banksy’s hope, it is understood, is that the uplifting works cheer people with a moment of unexpected amusement, as well as to gently underline the human capacity for creative play, rather than for destruction and negativity. Some recent theorising about the deeper significance of each new image has been way too involved, Banksy’s support organisation, Pest Control Office, has indicated.”
Banksy confirmed the two pelicans at Bonners Fish Bar in Walthamstow with British punctuality, 1 p.m. sharp. The novelty of today’s piece is that it’s not monochromatic; they’ve employed a few spray-strokes of white in the pelican beak.
This is the fourth day of some kind of series, and we don’t really know how it’s going to unfold. Very exciting!! Like previous days, it’s a one-colour, one-layer stencil of creatures from the Animal Kingdom trapped in the urban landscape. The timing of the posts is also worth mentioning: it’s always 1 p.m. sharp on his Instagram, @banksy.
Banksy continues his London residency with three graceful monkeys underneath the Overground bridge at Brick Lane, not far from the Truman Brewery Markets.
Banksy confirmed yet another piece from the Animal Kingdom on his Instagram around 1 p.m. on Tuesday. The exact address is 10 Edith Terrace in Chelsea, a few hundred meters east of Stamford Bridge. Could the elephants be the second piece in a series that started yesterday?
Banksy unofficial 