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10 August 2024, 23:03 | Updated: 10 August 2024, 23:07
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Onlookers booed contractors as they removed Banksy’s latest artwork just a few hours after it had been put up.
People expressed their outrage at the decision to remove the mysterious street artist’s last piece on Saturday evening.
Earlier today Banksy unveiled the sixth artwork in his new animal-themed collection in London, picturing a silhouette of a stretching cat on an empty, worn out advertising hoarding.
The elusive street artist posted a photo of the design on Instagram on Saturday without any caption.
One contractor, who only gave his name as Marc, had said earlier they were going to pull the billboard down on Monday anyway and replace it, but it was brought forward to Saturday in case someone “rips it down and leaves it unsafe”.
He told the PA news agency he would store the artwork as he had been told “to keep it in case he [Banksy] wants it”.But if it was not collected, he said, “it’ll go in a skip”.
However, the billboard’s owner told police he will donate it to an art gallery, an officer at the scene told PA.
A black board was used to cover the majority of the cat on the billboard at the request of the police, who wanted to stop people walking in the road in front of traffic to take pictures and videos.
Located in Cricklewood, north west London, the design depicted a large cat with an upturned nail as it appears to stretch out its body.
The artist has revealed a new animal artwork each day this week, of a goat, elephants, monkeys, a wolf and pelicans.
On Friday there were pelicans pinching fish from a London chip shop sign in Walthamstow, east London, and a wolf howling on a satellite dish was announced on Thursday in Peckham, south London.
However, less than an hour after it was disclosed, the wolf design was removed by three men, according to a witness who told the PA news agency that 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.
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Getty
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.”
A spokesman for Banksy told the PA news agency that the artist is neither connected to nor endorses the theft, and that they have “no knowledge as to the dish’s current whereabouts”.
The first piece of graffiti in Banksy’s new animal-themed series, which was announced on Monday, is near Kew Bridge in south-west London and 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.
This was followed by three monkeys looking as though they were swinging underneath a bridge over Brick Lane, near a vintage clothing shop in the popular east London market street, not far from Shoreditch High Street.
The street artist, whose identity is unknown but widely speculated on, was recently criticised by then home secretary James Cleverly, who said the artwork he created for Glastonbury Festival was “trivialising” small boat crossings and “vile”.
The artist had said he was the person behind an inflatable boat filled with migrant dummies which had been crowdsurfed at the music festival in June, during performances by Bristol indie punk band Idles and rapper Little Simz.
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