Elusive street artist Banksy said on April 30 that a new sculpture that appeared in central London of a man striding off a plinth, with his face blinded by a billowing flag, is his work.
In a humorous video posted on April 30 on his Instagram account, Banksy showed snippets of how the sculpture was put up in the dead of night. The sculpture appeared to have been erected in the early hours of April 29 on a plinth on a traffic island in Waterloo Place, near Buckingham Palace.
Before the artist's post, locals and tourists gathered to inspect the statue on the assumption it was Banksy's work because his signature was scrawled at the base of the plinth.
The statue is situated close to those of King Edward VII, who reigned between 1901 and 1910, and legendary nurse Florence Nightingale, as well as the Crimean War Memorial.
Statues are not what Banksy is primarily known for. He is far more famous for his spray-painting on buildings, with his first creations appearing in the early 1990s in his hometown of Bristol in southwest England. He has since gone global and his paintings and installations have sold for millions of dollars at auction. His street art is often targeted by thieves and vandals.
Banksy, who has never publicly revealed his identity, is part of a tradition of street artists who viewed the undercover act of posting their art in public as a subversive form of expression.
The statue's public unveiling comes just over a month after a Reuters investigation claimed to have confirmed the famously enigmatic artist's true identity.
It backed up a similar claim by the Mail on Sunday tabloid nearly two decades ago that he is a 52-year-old Briton, born as Robin Gunningham, who later changed his name to David Jones.
The report relied in part on a New York arrest record from 2000, as well as witness testimony from a more recent visit to Ukraine by Banksy.
