James Poore retweetledi
The man who made that statue has been anonymous for 30 years. He is worth $50 million. One of his paintings shredded itself live at Sotheby's in 2018 and sold three years later for $25 million. Reuters identified him 7 weeks ago. He still won't confirm.
His real name is most likely Robin Gunningham. He was born in Yate, near Bristol, in 1973. He legally changed his name to David Jones around 2008. David Jones is the second most common name for British men. Perfect cover.
He started painting on Bristol walls in the early 1990s. By 2000 he had switched to stencils, which let him work fast and dodge the police. His first famous mural, in 1997, was a teddy bear throwing a Molotov cocktail at three police officers.
A short list of what he has actually done:
In 2003 he walked into Tate Britain disguised as a pensioner and stuck one of his own paintings on the wall. Over the next two years he did the same at the Louvre, the British Museum, MoMA, the Met, the Brooklyn Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History. His fake stone in the British Museum, showing a caveman pushing a shopping trolley, stayed on display for three days before staff noticed.
In 2005 he painted nine pieces on the Israeli wall in the Palestinian West Bank.
In 2010 he directed Exit Through the Gift Shop, a documentary about street art. It was nominated for an Academy Award.
In 2015 he opened Dismaland, a fake amusement park inside an abandoned English seaside resort. It drew 150,000 visitors and brought £20 million to the local economy.
In 2017 he opened the Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem. Every room overlooks the Israeli wall. It still operates.
In October 2018 his painting Girl with Balloon sold at Sotheby's for £1 million. The instant the hammer dropped, the canvas slid out of the frame and shredded itself in front of the buyer. The auction house renamed it Love Is In The Bin. Three years later the same buyer sold the half-shredded canvas at the same auction house for £18.6 million.
In 2020 he painted Game Changer, showing a boy playing with a nurse doll dressed as a superhero. It sold in 2021 for £16.8 million. He gave the entire amount to the NHS.
In 2022 he painted a series of murals across war-damaged Ukraine, including a young judo fighter throwing a much bigger man. According to the Reuters investigation, he travelled there as David Jones.
Last September he painted a judge beating an unarmed protester with a gavel onto the wall of the Royal Courts of Justice in London. It was scrubbed off within hours.
This week he installed the statue in that tweet on a traffic island in Pall Mall. He said there was "a bit of a gap" worth filling.
In March, Reuters identified him as Robin Gunningham. Their evidence: a signed confession from a 2000 New York arrest for defacing a Marc Jacobs billboard, plus immigration records showing a man called David Jones entered Ukraine the day Banksy's Ukraine murals went up.
His lawyer says he has chosen to say nothing.
John Simpson@JohnSimpsonNews
Congratulations to Westminster Council for their acceptance of Banksy’s brilliant statue near Pall Mall. Let’s hope it stays — a welcome note of calmness and humour at a time of growing extremism.
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