For many years, Banksy stored the world guessing. The Bristol-born graffiti artist, whose works have bought for hundreds of thousands, constructed an empire on anonymity. Now, an in depth investigation hints that the thriller could be over.
According to the investigation, revealed on Friday by information company Reuters, Banksy’s actual title is Robin Gunningham, a 51-year-old from Bristol, England. And the way in which he stayed hidden was quite simple. In 2008, Gunningham legally modified his title to David Jones.
“It is one of the most popular names in Britain,” the Reuters report states, “so common it helps him hide in plain sight.”
How Was His Identity Revealed?
Reuters didn’t arrive at this conclusion by a single breakthrough, it came after a series of revelations. The investigation began in Ukraine.
In late 2022, three folks arrived at a bombed-out constructing in Horenka. One wore a gray hoodie, one a baseball cap, and the third, Giles Duley, a widely known photographer, walked on prosthetic limbs. Together they painted a mural of a person in a tub on the broken wall. That picture turned the start line for a multinational investigation.
Reuters reporters returned to Horenka with a photograph lineup. The suspects included Thierry Guetta, the artist generally known as Mr Brainwash, Robert Del Naja, the frontman of British band Massive Attack, and Robin Gunningham.
A neighborhood resident picked out Del Naja, not Gunningham. An immigration supply then confirmed that Del Naja and Duley had each entered Ukraine shortly earlier than the murals appeared.
The most concrete proof got here not from Ukraine however from Manhattan, greater than twenty years earlier.
Banksy’s former supervisor, Steve Lazarides, had revealed books containing behind-the-scenes images. Reuters analysed these pictures. One set of pictures pointed to an arrest involving a trend billboard in New York in September 2000.
Using the pictures, reporters geolocated the constructing to 675 Hudson Street. They matched an commercial seen within the pictures to a Marc Jacobs marketing campaign operating throughout New York Fashion Week that very same month.
From there, they searched NYPD and New York courtroom data for the related dates. What they discovered was a misdemeanour cost of disorderly conduct for defacing a billboard. Inside the courtroom file was a handwritten confession and a signature. The title on each doc was Robin Gunningham.
Gunningham will not be a brand new title in reference to Banksy. The Mail on Sunday recognized him because the artist again in 2008. But Reuters says its investigation goes considerably additional, cross-referencing proof throughout a number of sources reasonably than counting on a single identification.
The road artist whose works have made headlines, damaged public sale data, and appeared on partitions from London to Los Angeles has by no means confirmed his identification. Banksy or his representatives didn’t settle for or deny the report.
In 2008, the identical 12 months the Mail on Sunday first revealed his title, Gunningham made a transfer that may purchase him one other seventeen years of anonymity. He modified his title legally to David Jones.
There was no pun. David Jones is among the most typical names within the English language. According to the Reuters investigation, it’s among the many hottest male names in Britain, shared by tens of 1000’s of individuals nationwide.
The timing was deliberate. The 2008 Mail on Sunday report had put Robin Gunningham’s title into public circulation for the primary time. By turning into David Jones by a authorized title change, Gunningham ensured that anybody looking for him below his beginning title would discover a clue.
Ironically, world’s most well-known nameless artist was hiding behind the commonest title.
