‘Banksy came overnight’: Neighbourhood wakes up to world-famous street art
The Banksy appeared the way Banksy murals often do: overnight, unsigned and to everyone’s complete surprise.
Before the artist claimed credit, the north London neighbourhood of Finsbury Park was embroiled in a full-on whodunit.
Was it truly the world-famous, elusive artist who had painted streaks of bright green paint that appeared as if they were foliage behind a large tree? Were there telltale signs of his work in the portrait of the young person holding a pressure sprayer on the peeling wall?
By the grey and rainy Monday morning, this normally sleepy corner of Finsbury Park had turned into a circus. Journalists and local politicians descended on the scene after the mural appeared. A Banksy expert rushed over and declared it to be the likely work of the artist.
There were other questions aside from the mural’s provenance. What would it mean for the neighbourhood? The Banksy work appeared on a wall just off Christie Court, a block of housing run by the local authority in the borough of Islington, where poor and working-class families live alongside very wealthy residents.
“Banksy came overnight and now my rent will skyrocket,” one person posted on social media with an upside-down smiling face emoji.
And then, of course, there were questions about the meaning of the artwork itself.
“It’s been done for a purpose: to get people talking, to get people interested,” said Jeremy Corbyn, the MP for North Islington and former leader of Britain’s Labour Party, who arrived near the mural in Hornsey Rd around 10:30am and was immediately surrounded by cameras and curious constituents.
But talking about what, and interested in what? Banksy’s anti-establishment street art has achieved global notoriety in recent years, and curiosity about the artist himself has lent an aura of mystery to his work.
However, Banksy rarely, if ever, explains the meaning behind his street art, letting audiences interpret it for themselves. This makes reaching a definitive conclusion about any work by him tricky.
Banksy’s own pictures of the work had no caption on social media.
“It’s typical Banksy,” said Jenna Edwards, 31, a local who came to see what the fuss was all about. “No matter if the branches and the leaves fall off, as long as you address the root, and we all come together, then we can grow back better,” she said of the tree and its painted foliage.
Jonathan Ward, 55, a local resident and community activist, believed the mural carried an environmental message. Ward said the young person painted on the wall “seems to be holding a weedkiller spray”, in what could be a reference to the “damaging effect” of products such as glyphosate.
Some observers noted that the paint’s shade of green was similar to a shade used by Islington Council for its street signs. Yet others said it was a reference to St Patrick’s Day, which was Sunday.
Rafael Schacter, an associate professor of anthropology and material culture at University College London, said in an email that the mural was “one of the best Banksy works I’ve seen in a while”, and felt “genuinely site-specific”. “The brutally pollarded tree against the plain side wall of the adjacent building it sits against provides a really perfect backdrop,” he said, speculating that the work was a statement on the debate about how to best maintain and care for trees.
He said the use of colour and technique “in which hand-pumped garden pressure sprayers are repurposed to paint graffiti – something similarly done with fire extinguishers – is a nice touch in term of the relation to … their use in gardening, often for weeding.”
It quickly became an attraction. A group of 23-year-olds heard about the mural and came to have a look. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen [a Banksy] in the flesh,” one said.
In recent years, public art by Banksy has at times sparked extreme reactions in the communities where it has appeared: Last year, the district council in the eastern seaside town of Margate dismantled an installation by Banksy timed for Valentine’s Day – prompting an outcry from residents who called it overreach by their local government at the expense of art that could draw tourists to their town.
And in December, two people were arrested after a piece of Banksy’s work
– a London stop sign adorned with what appeared to be drones – went missing.