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The key to unlocking Banksy's latest mural in London

Fiona Macdonald
Getty Images Banksy's mural works better when viewed from a distance (Credit: Getty Images)Getty Images
Banksy's mural works better when viewed from a distance (Credit: Getty Images)

With a new mural that appeared in London on Sunday, and which only makes sense from a distance, the elusive British street artist is playing with our perspective.

In a grey North London street on Monday, people gathered aimlessly, pointing their phones at a wall. Up close, however, the artwork on the wall they were photographing didn't make much sense. That's the point of Banksy's latest offering – it demands distance. When attempting a selfie, jostling for a solo spot in an Insta-crowd, that's hard to achieve. Yet stand too close, and it just looks like you're taking a selfie in front of some green splatter.

Banksy – who hasn't revealed his identity, but is one of the world's most famous artists – yesterday confirmed he was the creator of a mural that popped up on Sunday in Finsbury Park, Islington. Behind a bare cherry tree next to a block of flats, a wall has been sprayed with green paint.

Getty Images Banksy's mural works better when viewed from a distance (Credit: Getty Images)Getty Images
Banksy's mural works better when viewed from a distance (Credit: Getty Images)

Despite parks a few streets away, there's not a lot of nature to look at on this section of Hornsey Road. It's an urban neighbourhood, in what its MP (and former Labour leader) Jeremy Corbyn described as "the most densely populated constituency in the country".

The further you get from Banksy's mural, the more it appears to add a touch of the bucolic. Approaching from Crouch End, there's a moment when the tree looks to be in full leaf. Squint from a block away, and it's a cartoon version of utopia in N19.

Up close, however, it's spindly black branches against a wall of green dribbles, ending in a stencilled figure (typical of Banksy's work) peering up, as if wondering what all the fuss is about.

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It's now become an event whenever a new piece of Banksy's appears in an urban street, and there's an associated risk for the artist – one that James Peak, who created the BBC Radio 4 series The Banksy Story, flagged yesterday: Banksy has "an emerging problem" of people trying to steal his work.

Alamy Banksy covered a stop sign in Peckham, South London with military drones in December 2023 – it was removed an hour later (Credit: Alamy)Alamy
Banksy covered a stop sign in Peckham, South London with military drones in December 2023 – it was removed an hour later (Credit: Alamy)

A stop sign that had been adapted by Banksy was removed an hour after it appeared in Peckham, South London, on 22 December 2023. Two men were arrested on suspicion of theft and criminal damage in relation to the sign, which was decorated with three military drones and could be worth up to £500,000.

Yet with the street artist incorporating a tree into his work, Peak told the BBC, "I don't think anyone is going to be able to nick this... how are you going to steal a tree">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });