A Banksy outdoor installation that electrified London in the Summer of 2024 awaits its next appearance: a prime spot in the newly refurbished London Museum in Smithfield.
The artwork, depicting a police sentry box transformed into an aquarium teeming with piranhas, materialised overnight on 11 August last year. It was part of a nine-day series of animal-themed installations that popped up across the city.
From a distance, the booth appeared to be a simple fish tank, but a closer look revealed the aquatic inhabitants were sharp-toothed piranhas. Many interpreted the piece as a nod to Damien Hirst’s famous shark, or as a reimagining of a statement on surveillance and authority.
After a brief public display at Guildhall Yard, it was placed in secure storage. It is scheduled to reemerge in 2026 as a centrepiece of the London Museum’s new Smithfield location, a $280 million move projected to attract two million annual visitors.
Among dedicated followers, Piranhas quickly became the standout favourite of the series. It beat out other entries—such as monkeys dangling from a bridge, elephants in Chelsea windows, and a rhino atop a car—for its striking colour, clever location, and complex meaning. Kelly Grovier, an art historian who wrote a book on the artist, described it as a “ghostly shoal of ghoulish piranhas” that effectively “rehabilitates” the once-shocking impact of Hirst’s shark.
For a few weeks, the entire project turned London into a city-wide puzzle. Each day in August, a new creature would appear: a wolf howling from a satellite dish, pelicans raiding a shop sign, a goat balancing on a bridge. The public’s delight was palpable as they eagerly decoded the meanings and watched to see how long each piece would last before being altered or removed by vandals or officials.
Banksy is the most visible invisible figure in contemporary art. His name makes headlines, yet the person behind it remains sealed in secrecy. That deliberate absence—neither slip nor accident—has become the engine of his reputation, an anonymity that turns every new work into both artwork and event.
Banksy emerged from the margins of Bristol in the 1990s, a city where sound systems, graffiti, and anarchic politics collided. Out of this mix, he seized on the stencil—not just as a shortcut for working quickly, but as a weapon. Clean lines, reproducibility, and immediacy transformed a utilitarian method into his hallmark —a visual code that seeped from backstreets into the global bloodstream.
The targets of his imagery are broad and consistent: state power, militarism, capitalism, and the art world itself. For Banksy, the city is the canvas. Bridges, derelict facades, and concrete walls become the stage, turning the street into a gallery without consent or ticket price. The image is only half the work—the act of placing it there, illegally and in public view, is the other.
Each artwork functions as a disruptive element, teaming with double meanings. Whether slipping a counterfeit relic into the British Museum or triggering the partial destruction of a canvas in the glare of Sotheby’s toffs,it questions the instability of how art is assigned a value. They masquerade as jokes, but their message is sharper: a reminder that the market eagerly elevates even the works that openly deride its rituals.
Banksy is a paradox: a brand without a face, a vandal elevated to icon, a satirist whose every gesture is swallowed by the system he resists. His works may be scrubbed from walls, sold at auction, or endlessly reproduced, but the provocation remains. He lingers not only on plaster and brick, but also in the public imagination—an ongoing interruption that is sprayed across the streets of modern life.
Top Photo: Courtesy Banksy via Instagram