Where to find Banksy’s best graffiti

Banksy’s street art has popped up across the UK(Picture: Jim Dyson/Getty Images)

Banksy is an anonymous British graffiti artist who brings political street art to walls, bridges, and buildings worldwide.

Since rising to fame in the late 1990s, the artist’s witty, satirical murals and daring pranks have earned him millions of pounds.

A new mural of a green splatter behind a leafless tree that appeared on Monday morning in Finsbury Park, north London has already attracted flocks of visitors.

So, who is Banksy and where can you see his work?

Here’s all you need to know.

Where to see Banksy in London

The Finsbury Park tree mural isn’t the first time that Banksy has graced the capital.

Several Banksy murals in London have been removed or destroyed – but eagle-eyed fans can still see some of his work out on the streets.

The new work could see rents on the nearby buildings go up (Picture: Ella Nunn/PA Wire)

There are two Banksy pieces on the side of defunct nightclub Cargo in Shoreditch, and a 2008 cartoon parodying the royal family is still intact on Church Street in Stoke Newington.

A very faint outline of a 2008 piece of a girl and a cash machine can just about be made out on Rosebury Avenue in Clerkenwell, but much of it has faded.

A mural in Mayfair of a woman falling from a building holding onto a shopping trolley is one of London’s best-preserved Banksy’s. You can see it on Bruton Street.

You can find Banksy’s Falling Shopper artwork in Mayfair (Picture: Alberto Pezzali/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

However, the easiest way to see Banksy’s art in London is at the Art of Banksy, an unauthorised exhibition of his work, which reopens on 22 March at a new location on Charing Cross Road.

Where can you see Banksy’s art in the rest of the UK?

Banksy’s hometown Bristol is packed with murals by the secretive artist.

One of his most famous works, the Grim Reaper, was originally painted on the side of the Thekla, a nightclub inside a boat docked in Bristol harbour.

A mural created by British artist Banksy entitled “Aachoo!!” appeared in Bristol in December 2020 (Picture: GEOFF CADDICK/AFP via Getty Images)

However, in 2014 the piece was removed to protect it from damage. It’s now on display in Bristol’s M Shed museum.

You can also find the artwork Well Hung Lover on the side of a sexual health clinic on Frogmore Street, and The Girl with the Pierced Eardrum, a parody of the Johannes Vermeer painting, is on Hanover Place.

His art has also popped up elsewhere in the UK, including Hull, Nottingham, and Cheltenham.

The new Banksy which has appeared in Cheltenham, the home of government surveillance agency GCHQ (Picture: SWNS)

Why has so much of Banksy’s art been destroyed?

The rocketing price of Banksy’s work means that many of his pieces vanish without warning as building owners try to make a profit.

An entire section of a shop wall in Lowestoft that displayed an original Banksy was removed in 2021 and taken to a secret location.

In December 2023, a Banksy artwork in Peckham of three drones on a traffic stop sign was stolen less than an hour after it was put up.

The Peckham sign was stolen in broad daylight (Picture: Aaron Chown/PA Wire)

A man with bolt cutters tore the piece down and another man on a Lime rental bike rode away with it.

One gallery owner told the BBC that the sign could be worth up to £500,000.

In other instances, though, Banksy’s work has been accidentally destroyed.

Last year, builders unknowingly demolished a Banksy mural on the side of a derelict farmhouse in Kent.

‘It made me feel sick realising it was a Banksy – we were gutted. We started demolishing it yesterday,’ one of the contractors involved said.

‘The landowner watched us do it and didn’t know either.’

Why did Banksy destroy his own art?

In 2018, a Banksy painting called Girl With Balloon was sold for more than £1 million at auction house Sotheby’s – and was shredded just moments later.

The price of the art increased after the shredding (Picture: Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

The auctioneers were unaware that Banksy had installed a shredding mechanism into the painting’s frame.

Following the incident Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s senior director, said: ‘It appears we just got Banksy-ed.’

The original buyer still purchased the artwork at the full original price, but the painting was renamed from Girl With Balloon to Love is in the Bin.

Then, in 2021, the painting was sold again – this time setting the record for the most expensive painting to be sold at auction at £18.6 million.

How much is Banksy’s art worth?

Banksy doesn’t sell his own artwork. However, pieces of his work owned by other people have fetched tens of millions at auction.

He gave the artwork Game Changer to Southampton Hospital in 2020 as a thank you to NHS workers. The painting was later sold for £16.8 million, with the money going towards NHS causes.

The picture fetched £16.8 million (Picture: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire)

A 2005 painting called Sunflowers From Petrol Station, which parodied Van Gogh’s famous sunflower paintings, fetched £10.7 million in 2021 when it was sold by fashion designer Sir Paul Smith.

Who is Banksy?

The mystery surrounding Banksy has, understandably, made people eager to find out his true identity.

Though nothing’s ever been verified, there have been a few rumours, clues, and hints as to who they actually are.

One of Banksy’s iconic murals (Picture: REX/Shutterstock)

Of course, it’s thought that Banksy wants to keep their identity a secret, given that graffiti is a crime – but myths about their real name are common, often linking back to the beginning of their career, as well as those who have publicly ‘named’ them.

Banksy began their artistic journey as one of Bristol’s DryBreadZ Crew. They were influenced by others on the Bristol Underground Scene – including 3D, better known as Robert Del Naja, one of the members of the band Massive Attack.

Rumours that Banksy is Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja have persisted. The performer identified himself as a personal friend of Banksy, and in June 2017, rapper Goldie referred to Banksy as ‘Rob’ when conversing about art in a podcast interview with Scroobius Pip.

Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack has denied claims that he is Banksy (Picture: Brian Rasic/WireImage)

Interestingly, the timing of Banksy’s past works across the world is in tandem with the touring schedule of Massive Attack.

However, Goldie may have been referring to Robin Gunningham, who was said to be Banksy by some former schoolmates from Bristol and associates in a 2008 Mail on Sunday investigation.

The suggestion that Robin Gunningham was Banksy was supported by the study of locations of Banksy’s art, which correlated with the known movements of Gunningham.

In an interview with a Bristol community magazine, Boundless, Banksy was asked about the Robert De Naja rumours. When asked if he would confirm the claim that he was indeed Robert, he said simply: ‘No, because I’m not.’

Speculation that Banksy is a group or collective of graffiti artists is fairly common, too, and in 2014 an internet hoax circulated that Banksy had been arrested.

A man in Israel captured footage of a graffiti artist that he believed to be Banksy but turned out to be James Ame, who is ame72, another famed graffiti artist.

The footage was taken around the time Banksy opened a guesthouse called The Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem.

Street artist James Ame was once thought to be Banksy (Picture: SWNS)

Follow Metro across our social channels, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Share your views in the comments below.