9 months after his zoo-themed graffiti spree in London, Banksy is again.
In line with his Instagram account, the artist’s newest work is a lone lighthouse, in his trademark black towards a stucco wall, beaming mild from its lantern room. Superimposed over the lighthouse is the message, “I wish to be what you noticed in me” written in a daring white font.
The lighthouse’s painted shadow connects to a bollard on a sidewalk however apart from the picture, Banksy supplied no caption or means to establish its location. Inside two hours of posting, the picture had collected greater than 300,000 likes.
Other than a Madonna and Child mural posted on December of final yr, the lighthouse seems to be the primary new work since Banksy’s 2023 “Beastly London” marketing campaign, a nine-day burst of animal-themed murals scattered throughout town. Elephants peeked from boarded home windows in Chelsea, monkeys swung over Shoreditch, and a goat stood poised on the sting of collapse close to Kew Bridge. There was additionally the now-infamous picture of a rhinoceros enthusiastically mounting a Nissan Micra in Walthamstow—a bit that drew each laughter and laments earlier than it was defaced and dismantled.
As regular, Banksy supplied no clues to his latest work’s which means. As an alternative, Instagram followers stuffed within the gaps, studying every little thing from critiques of state surveillance to commentary on media narratives into the stenciled creatures. One mural, that includes a police sentry field turned fish tank, was praised as a sly riff on Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde shark and can quickly be enshrined within the new London Museum.
