Out running on Tuesday evening, I went past a goat, stood precariously on a cream pillar jutting out of the wall of a building. People bunched around, gawping at it and taking photos. Below was parked a car belonging to a private security firm. The goat was all black and two-dimensional – it was the first of four pieces Banksy has done in London so far this week.
The anonymous Bristolian has been working his way east, then south. The goat was opposite Kew Bridge in Richmond, south-west London. Then Banksy unveiled two elephant heads, stretching their trunks towards each other from a pair of blocked-out windows in Chelsea. On Wednesday, he delivered a further three monkeys swinging across a railway bridge above Brick Lane. On Thursday, a howling wolf on a satellite dish in Peckham, which was carried off by thieves in broad daylight after its installation. Banksy is, of course, years past being in any way cool or cutting edge. The artistic and political merits of his work are as thin as his stencils. All it’s fit for is Sotheby’s, or a picture in the paper.
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