WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 2024
A spray painted mural behind a pruned tree in London has both attracted crowds and sparked discussion after street artist Banksy confirmed that the work was his.
Located in the Finsbury Park neighborhood, the mural covers a four-story residential building. It features a small figure holding a pressure hose beside a large cherry tree, which had been severely pruned. The green paint sprayed across the wall reported replicates the absent leaves.
The mural went up sometime on Sunday (March 17), and Banksy posted the before-and-after images of the wall the following day. According to the building’s owner, the building is currently vacant and for rent but the mural will remain.
Alex Georgiou, whose company owns the building, said “it’s quite mad to be honest, to come down here and just to see all the crowds of people looking at the building.”
“I definitely plan on keeping it on there and letting people enjoy it,” he said. “Everyone’s loving it, which is great.”
According to James Peak, who created the BBC Radio 4 series “The Banksy Story,” the mural was created with a “great arterial spray of green paint” across a white wall, accompanied by a “classic Banksy-style stencil.”
Peak added that the art would have probably been created using a pressure hose or fire extinguisher.
Banksy London tree mural: Artist appears to confirm work is his own https://t.co/ABeJOhDOwY
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) March 18, 2024
Some observers reportedly noted that the paint’s shade of green is similar to a shade used by Islington Council, the district authority in charge, in street signs. Others said it was a reference to St. Patrick’s Day, which was also Sunday.
Rafael Schacter, an associate professor of anthropology and material culture at University College London, said in an email to The Washington Post that the mural was “one of the best Banksy works I’ve in a while,” and felt “genuinely site-specific.”
“The brutally pollarded tree against the plain side wall of the adjacent building it sits against provides a really perfect backdrop,” he said, speculating that the work was a statement on the debate about how to best maintain and care for trees.
He added that the use of color and technique “in which hand-pumped garden pressure sprayers are re-purposed to paint graffiti—something similarly done with fire extinguishers—is a nice touch in term of the relation to… their use in gardening, often for weeding.”
Islington Council told The Washington Post in an email that its “graffiti removal team is aware of the artwork” by Banksy “and won’t remove it.”
“It’s been done for a purpose: to get people talking, to get people interested,” said Jeremy Corbyn, the member of Parliament who represents North Islington.
The council believes the cherry tree in the foreground of the artwork is around 40 to 50 years old and is in declining health, with decay and fungi damage, BBC reports. It says it has been maintaining and pruning the tree for some time and is expected to continue working to keep the tree alive.
Tagged categories: Artists; Color; Color + Design; Color + Design; Design; Design - Commercial; Graffiti; Murals; Murals; Program/Project Management
