Peckham Banksy art has been removed by two men yesterday. Overall, the artist installed the three-drone installation on the “stop” sign. A man witnessed the removal of a Banksy piece on a stop sign. This happened within an hour of verifying its authenticity. He also aimed nobody recognised what to do, and they just continued observing men taking down the work.
Peckham Banksy Art Taken Down
Firstly, the Metropolitan Police confirmed there was no ongoing inquiry into the event. This is because no one who asserted ownership of the artwork came forward to declare the theft. Alex saw the artwork while on his lunch break on a Lime bike, which a man later used as a platform to take the artwork from. “This guy comes up and grabs it, we watched in awe as he bashed it”, he said.
“He fell off the Lime bike at one point. He disappeared and went away, and about two minutes later he reappeared with bolt cutters, and just sort of tried and tried and tried while everyone was watching. “We said, ‘what are you doing?’ But no-one really knew what to do, we sort of just watched it happen.
“I went there thinking that people want that, I wanted to see it before something happened to it”. Another witness said onlookers had shouted at the man while he tried to take the art piece down with the help of another. “As soon as it (the art piece) went up online a few people cycled down to it to see it straight away and just sort of hung around,” they said.
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Messages on the Pandemic
Banksy has installed other pieces this year including Valentine’s Day Mascara, a mural weighing 3.8 tonnes, which appeared on the side of a house in Margate, Kent, on Valentine’s Day. It depicted a 1950s’ housewife with a swollen eye and missing tooth, wearing an apron and yellow washing-up gloves, and throwing a man into a chest freezer.
In September it was placed in the foyer of The Art of Banksy exhibition in central London, where it can be viewed for free. The exhibition features pieces including Girl With Balloon, Flower Thrower and Rude Copper and also focuses on Banksy’s Dismaland that was installed in Weston-super-Mare, The Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem and recent works acknowledging the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The artist often refers to contemporary issues and in 2020 included messages about the coronavirus pandemic in his work.
