Hi Kelly, everyone seems to be speaking about Banksy (once more) – what’s he finished this time?
Hi Nick. So a really long (8,000-word) investigation by Reuters claims it has found the elusive road artist’s true id, which backs up claims made by the Mail on Sunday British tabloid virtually twenty years in the past that he’s a 52-year-old Bristol-born man referred to as Robin Gunningham, now going by the title of David Jones.
Wait … didn’t we already know that? Or was it presupposed to be the man from Massive Attack?
Sort of. Previous studies recommended that Robert Del Naja, the co-founder of Massive Attack – a pioneer in trip-hop, which is a music style that additionally has its roots in Bristol – was Banksy. Now plainly Naja is Gunningham’s secret associate/enabler/scout/gatekeeper.
Gotcha. So what did Reuters uncover in the best way of proof? Is there a smoking gun? Or a rat (ahem) within the ranks?
No rat, only a rat-faced Banksy scaling a Manhattan brownstone to deface a Marc Jacobs poster again in 2000. This wasn’t a bit of expertly stencilled political artwork, it was a careless try to color “goofy buck teeth” on the implausibly excellent face of a male mannequin. The cops caught him within the wee hours of Saturday morning and he clearly wasn’t clear-headed sufficient to do what rogue road artists at all times do in these conditions – signal a faux title to a confession to keep away from a felony cost. He signed the confession Robin Gunningham and copped a $310 US tremendous for “disorderly conduct”. Reuters uncovered the NYPD report 24 years later.
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And then there’s the Ukraine connection …
The Ukraine connection?
Reuters went on a reverse forensic journey. It discovered that after the primary 2008 unmasking by the Mail on Sunday, all proof of Robin Gunningham’s existence vanished – no tax information, employment information, property filings, zilch. In 2022 a bunch of Banksy artworks had started appearing on bombed out buildings in Ukraine. Reuters checked the immigration and border management information and discovered that Robert Del Naja had entered the besieged nation across the similar time. Aha! Back to the Massive Attack hyperlink.
Naja’s travelling companion was somebody referred to as David Jones, whose birthdate occurred to match the date of beginning listed for Gunningham on the 2000 New York arrest file. There are about 15,000 blokes referred to as David Jones within the UK (most of them in all probability dwelling in Wales), so what higher option to go off the grid by adopting a reputation so aggressively common it features as a human camouflage.
Indeed, it’s famously laborious to maintain up with the Joneses. Oh, and I get it, “Robin BANKS”. Groan. It all matches collectively. This all sounds fairly convincing. Are you satisfied? Does it match with what we knew up to now?
It could not have a purple dot on it but, however I’m ready to have the proof framed and mounted within the Louvre (as soon as they’ve overhauled their security). It backs up quite a lot of what Banksy’s previous manager, Steve Lazarides, wrote in his two-volume chronicle Banksy Captured, printed in 2019 and 2020, together with the admission Bansky certainly was the artist caught in the act in New York.
Banksy’s longtime lawyer, Mark Stephens, instructed Reuters that Banksy “does not accept that many of the details contained within your enquiry are correct”. It’s not precisely a denial.
And don’t neglect there’s additionally that outdated BBC recorded interview that resurfaced 20 years later in 2023, the place the interviewer asks Banksy if his actual title is Robert Banks, to which the artist replies: “It’s Robbie.” OK, in order that doesn’t rule out Robert Del Naja (who additionally makes use of the road title 3D) however check out the Massive Attack album covers Naja himself has illustrated. They’re plain creepy, like a pharmaceutically induced nightmare. Banksy’s work might be politically acerbic, however it’s grounded in wit and whimsy – extra seemingly the product of some tender-hearted dweeb who will get wasted in New York and paints goofy tooth on billboards.
If it looks like a Robin, appears like a Robbie, and travels to conflict zones as a Dave, it’s in all probability Gunningham.
Why ought to we care?
We in all probability shouldn’t. The biggest trick Banksy ever pulled wasn’t making a portray shred itself; it was disguising a middle-aged bloke from Bristol, in all probability with youngsters and a mortgage, as a worldwide city guerrilla, laughing at us behind his cozy Marks & Spencer hoodie for the previous 30 years.
