A new statue appeared overnight in central London, depicting a man walking off the end of a plinth with a flag pole in his hands and the fabric covering his face. The installation was seen in Waterloo Place, about 450 meters from Downing Street, and sits near statues of Edward VII and the Crimean War Memorial.
Banksy's signature appeared to have been scrawled at the bottom of the statue, but there were no new posts on his Instagram page as of publishing. That matters because he typically confirms authorship there, and the silence leaves the work in the same uneasy space as some of his recent London murals, which have also gone unsigned.
Banksy has long used anonymity as part of the work itself. The article says he has kept his identity unknown so he can keep working without the constraints of fame, and that the concealment also served as protection from police prosecution. That mystery has only sharpened the reaction around his public art, which often lands as a political statement as much as a visual one.
The timing adds another layer. A report earlier this year said it had identified Banksy as Robin Gunningham, 51, from Bristol, who allegedly changed his name to David Jones, but the artist has not publicly confirmed that claim. He has also been linked in the report to a handwritten confession note from an arrest in New York in 2000 and to a trip to Ukraine in 2022, details that sit alongside the latest installation without resolving the central question around it: whether the signature at the base is the artist's final word, or just another part of the performance.