Moment new Banksy artwork is hauled away by council workers in high-vis jackets in front of devastated onlookers
THIS is the moment one of Banksy's latest masterpieces is removed by council workers in high-vis jackets.
Disappointed onlookers watched as the elusive artist's seventh piece in as many days was hauled away near St Paul's cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, in London.
The blue fishes, housed in a police sentry box, are made to look like a school of piranha fish swimming in a tank.
A video clip shared on TikTok shows men in high-vis suits and hard hats removing the structure and laying it flat on a tow truck.
A worker in the area told The Sun: "It was a buzz around the police box during the day and evening as well.
"People were still taking photos of the spot once it was gone.
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“It’s a shame a small piece of joy for so many has been removed. I’ve never seen policemen in that box anyway.
“May as well make something memorable and fun out of it.”
A spokesperson 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.
“A permanent home for the piece will be decided in due course”.
Devastated fans rushed to the comments to share their compassion for the mysterious street artist.
"I feel so bad for Banksy. Imagine having to just sit on the sidelines and watch your art get taken away like that, taken away from its purpose to be seen and admired by the normal person," wrote one.
"Why would they not let people admire it," agreed another.
A third added: "Why can't we just admire this art, why does it have to be taken and sold to the highest bidder."
The animal themed artwork is part of a collection of eight, which has featured a goat, elephants, monkeys, a wolf, pelicans, a cat and a rhino, scattered across the capital.
It comes after the wolf, on a satellite dish, was taken by suspected thieves.
The work was removed by three men, according to a witness, who said he filmed them, which led to one of the men throwing his phone on a roof.
"It's a great shame we can't have nice things and it's a shame it couldn't have lasted more than an hour," he said.
A statement from the Metropolitan Police said: "We were called to reports of a stolen satellite dish containing artwork at 1.52pm on Thursday August 8 in Rye Lane, Peckham.
"There have been no arrests. Inquiries continue."
Meanwhile the stretching cat, painted on an empty billboard, was ripped off by contractors who warned it could end up in a skip.
Men who said they were "hired" from a "contracting company" turned up to take the hoarding down for supposed safety reasons.
A contractor, who only wanted to give his name as Marc, said they were going to pull the boarding down on Monday and replace it, but the removal had been brought forward to Saturday in case someone "rips it down and leaves it unsafe".
He said: "We'll store that bit (the artwork) in our yard to see if anyone collects it but if not it'll go in a skip.
"I've been told to keep it careful in case he wants it."
A photographer who has been to see all of the Banksy pieces of art this week - bar the 'stolen' wolf - said he thinks the animals are a message from the artist that the city has "turned into a zoo".
Avi Yasitli, 63, said: "We can interpret it in many ways, my interpretation is 'you guys are just wild animals and this place has turned into a zoo'.
"None of the animals are actually pets."
The first piece of graffiti in Banksy's animal-themed series, announced on Monday, is near Kew Bridge in southwest London.
It shows a goat with rocks falling down below it, just above where a CCTV camera is pointed.
On Tuesday the artist added silhouettes of two elephants with their trunks stretched towards each other on the side of a building near Chelsea, west London.
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This was followed by three monkeys looking as though they were swinging underneath a bridge over Brick Lane.
The fifth design, of pelicans pinching fish from a London chip shop sign in Walthamstow, east London, was revealed on Friday.
Who is Banksy?
Banksy first got noticed for spray-painting trains and walls in his home city of Bristol during the early 1990s.
Street art and graffiti can be considered criminal damage so it's thought the artist stayed anonymous to avoid a run-in with the law.
In the beginning, his pieces were mainly created in Bristol, but in the 2000s his artworks started appearing all over the UK and other parts of the world.
Banksy chose to use stencils to create his pieces, probably because it's a faster way to paint.
He was influenced in his early days by a French graffiti artist called Blek le Rat.
Blek le Rat is considered to be the father of stencil graffiti and people sometimes confuse the work of the two artists.
Banksy doesn't only do street art - he has produced drawings, paintings and installation pieces.
The anonymous artist no longer sells photographs or reproductions of his street graffiti.
But his public "installations" are regularly resold, often even by removing the wall they were painted on.
He has also created his own theme park called Dismaland.
Banksy has left his memorable mark all over the world but has been most prolific in the UK.
The guerrilla artist is known to have created more than 120 works spanning three decades.
- In 2002, There is Always Hope - possibly the artist's most famous work - appeared on the South Bank in London.
- Devolved Parliament, Banksy's 13ft wide painting of chimpanzees in the House of Commons, hit the headlines in October 2019 when it sold at auction for £9.9million.
- GCHQ Government Spies Telephone Box was created in April 2014. The piece in Cheltenham shows three men wearing sunglasses and using listening devices to snoop on a phone box.
- In May 2020, Banksy unveiled new artwork Game Changer, which was painted on the wall of a ward at Southampton General Hospital in Hampshire.
- On July 14, 2020, Banksy returned to the London Underground with a work encouraging people to wear face masks. The work, called If You Don't Mask, You Don't Get, features a number of rats in pandemic-inspired poses, wearing face masks - but it was scrubbed off by cleaners.
- In October 2020, a Banksy mural appeared on the side of a building in Rothesay Avenue in Nottingham. The artwork shows a girl hula-hooping with a bicycle tyre. The mural has now been removed and sold to an Essex art gallery, disappointing local people who had hoped it would stay in the city.
- In December 2020, a Covid-inspired Banksy mural of a woman sneezing out her dentures on the side of a semi-detached home popped up on the side of a house in Bristol.
- In March 2020, Banksy confirmed an image showing a prisoner escaping from a former Reading Prison with a typewriter at the bottom of a "rope" made out of sheets of paper knotted together, was one of his works.
- In November 2022, Banksy has made his mark in Ukraine after unveiling a painting of a gymnast on the side of a tower block bombed by Russia.
- In February 2023, a new Banksy piece was confirmed after artwork showing a bruised woman pushing a man into a freezer appeared on the side of a building in Margate, Kent. The image depicted a 1950s housewife in an apron and washing-up gloves. a closer look revealed the woman had a swollen eye and a missing tooth. The artwork also incorporated a freezer - believed to have been placed up against the wall purposely - and a man's legs sticking out as she closes the lid on him.
- In December 2023, a new Banksy artwork was removed from a south London street less than an hour after it was confirmed to be a genuine installation. The artist confirmed the artwork - a traffic stop sign covered with three aircraft said to resemble military drones - was his in a social media post shortly after midday.
- In March 2024, a new Banksy tree mural was sprayed on the side of a home in London. However, two days later images showed two streaks of white paint covering the green artwork.
