BANKSY 'NICKED'
New Banksy piece is ‘STOLEN’ just minutes after secretive artist shared pictures of his latest work
Watch the moment masked men removed the artwork and took it away in the video above
A NEW Banksy piece appears to have been STOLEN just minutes after the secretive artist shared pictures of his latest work.
A group of men were seen taking down the artwork from the roof of a shop in Peckham, south London.
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Graffiti artist Banksy painted a howling wolf on a satellite dish, which has now been ripped off the roof and taken away.
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It's currently unclear whether the removal of the artwork is a stunt by the artist but cops are probing what appears to be a theft.
The men used a ladder to get onto the roof of the shop on Peckham's Rye Lane.
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They were later seen heading down the thoroughfare with the ladder and the satellite dish.
Cops were called to reports of a stolen satellite dish "containing artwork" at 1.52pm.
But there have been no arrests and enquiries continue, Scotland Yard said.
A witness to the removal of a piece of Banksy artwork in Peckham has described his encounter with those taking it.
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Tom Kellow, who lives in Peckham, said he had decided to walk down to Rye Road to see the artwork on his lunch break.
He said: "I was walking down around 1pm and saw three guys nicking it.
"They had a ladder. There was one guy on the roof and the other two were watching the ladder.
"They saw me filming and it got a bit tetchy. One gave me a kick in the side and another tried to throw my phone on the roof. Luckily it hit a tree and came back down again.
"I told a police officer in the area about it.
"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."
The artwork is the fourth new Banksy piece to appear in London in just four days.
They include an ibex goat in Kew, two elephants in Chelsea and three monkeys in Shoreditch.
Snaps of the latest artwork were shared at 1pm this afternoon on Banksy's official Instagram page.
The artist typically leaves months between spraying new artworks and it is very unusual for him to paint so many in such a short time.
Banksy expert Paul Gough told : "Banksy is working towards a grand reveal or a big piece in the coming days.
"What’s different this time is that Banksy usually leaves it a bit of time, keeps people guessing whether a piece of work is authentically his.
"This time he is confirming it is his work straightaway, something we have not ever seen before.
"The question I think is how long can he sustain this both on a creative level and on a level which keeps his audience interested."
Last year a man was arrested after a £500,000 Banksy artwork was removed from a street sign in Peckham with bolt cutters.
The red stop sign featuring three military drones appeared in Peckham in December.
But just an hour after the elusive graffiti artist confirmed it was his, two men were seen taking it down.
Cops arrested a man on suspicion of theft and criminal damage after Southwark Council alerted Scotland Yard.
In June Banksy faced a furious backlash after launching a small boat with dummy migrants over the crowd at Glastonbury.
The street artist launched an inflatable life raft holding dummy migrants into the crowd during the Idles' set at the festival.
A representative for the Bristol punk band said its members were not aware of the stunt until after their set.
Many revellers had believed the dinghy was part of the Idles' headline set on the Other Stage.
The raft was a reference to the flimsy inflatable boats which human traffickers have used to smuggle asylum seekers across the Channel.
Banksy's stunt struck many people watching the concert as being in bad taste.
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One said: "That’s one of the most tasteless things I’ve ever seen - who thought that was a good idea?"
Another said: "This is the most middle class, out of touch thing I’ve ever seen. It couldn’t be more Glastonbury."
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.
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