uncovering the identity of
banksy
3
how do you know him? 19 15
graffiti & music
a lead!
13
27
the search begins
deception & exhibitions 17
the photograph
23
denial
21
contents
his signature style
35
so, who is he? 33
let’s find his parents
41
map of bristol
31
the trail runs out
table of contents
1
he is perhaps the most famous, or infamous, artist alive. to some a gen always controversial, he inspires admiration and provokes outrage i
Since Banksy made his name with his trademark stencilstyle ‘guerrilla’ art in public spaces — on walls in London, Brighton, Bristol and even on the West Bank barrier separating Israelis and Palestinians — his works have sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds. He has dozens of celebrity collectors including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Christina Aguilera.
nius, to others a vandal. in equal measure.
how do you know him?
3
Louvre, Paris 2004
He is also known for his headline-making stunts, such as leaving an inflatable doll dressed as a Guantanamo prisoner in Disneyland, California, and hanging a version of the Mona Lisa — but with a smiley face — in the Louvre, Paris.
But perhaps his most provocative statement,
and the one that generates the most publicity, is the fact that Banksy’s true identity has always been a jealously guarded secret, known to only a handful of trusted friends.
A network of myths has grown up around him.
That his real name is Robin Banks. That he used to be a butcher. That his parents don’t know what he does, believing him to be an unusually successful painter and decorator.
how do you know him?
5
then there’s the suggestion that banksy is actually a collective of artists
and doesn’t exist at all.
how do you know him?
7
Such is the curiosity about Banksy that when the great man threw a pizza box into a bin in Los Angeles, the box resurfaced on auction site eBay, with the seller suggesting that the few anchovies left inside might yield traces of his DNA.
He is the Scarlet Pimpernel of modern art, so
adept at leaving false trails that even his own agent has claimed that he is not certain of his identity.
Indeed, trying to establish just who the elusive
Banksy is has proved as difficult as predicting the location of his next work.
how do you know him?
9
but now, after an exhaustive year-long investigation in which we have spoken to dozens of friends, former colleagues, enemies, flatmates and members of banksy’s close family, the mail on sunday has come as close as anyone possibly can to revealing his identity.
Our search began with a photograph taken in Jamaica showing a man in a blue shirt and jeans, with a hint of a smile on his face and a spray can at his feet.
Taken four years ago, it was said to show Banksy at
work. When the picture was published it appeared to be the first chink in the armour of anonymity with which the artist has shielded himself ever since his work began to attract the attention of the art world.
Naturally, Banksy denied the picture was of him.
Indeed, as we discovered, Banksy and those close to him tend to deny everything.
Banksy as he works on artwork for Wall and Sound’s “Two Culture Clash” taken by the event’s photographer, Jamaica 2005
They exist without permission. They are hated, hunted and persecuted. They life in quiet desperation amongst the filth. And yet they are capable of bringing entire civilizations to their knees. Banksy
the search begins
11
Armed with this photograph, we travelled to Bristol, long said to have been Banksy’s home city, where we made contact with a man who claimed to have once met the artist in the flesh.
Of course, many people claim as much, but the
the man in the photograph, he insist was formerly known as Robin Gunn
moment one starts asking for more information, one discovers they actually ‘know someone who met Banksy’ — and the trail runs cold.
However, this man claimed not only to have met
the elusive artist but was able to furnish us with a name — not the usual variations of the name Banks but one
On July 28, 1973, Robin was born in the same hospital.
all the more intriguing. The man in the photograph, he
According to neighbours, the boy had early surgery for a
insisted, was formerly known as Robin Gunningham.
cleft palette. When Robin was nine, the family moved to
From records available to the public, we were able to
a larger home in the same street and it is there he spent
glean further information.
his formative years and became interested in graffiti.
Robin’s father, Peter Gordon Gunningham, 66, is
A neighbour, Anthony Hallett, recalls the couple
a retired contracts manager from the Whitehall area
moving into the street as newlyweds and living there
of Bristol. His mother, Pamela Ann Dawkin-Jones, 67,
until 1998. They have since separated. When we showed
was a company director’s secretary and grew up in the
Mr. Hallett the Jamaica photo, he said the man in it was
exclusive surroundings of Clifton. She now works in a
Robin Gunningham.
nursing home.
grey trousers and striped tie to attend the renowned
The couple married on April 25, 1970, at Kingswood
In 1984, Robin, then 11, donned a black blazer,
Wesley Methodist Church. On February 8, 1972, their
Bristol Cathedral School, which currently charges fees of
daughter Sarah was born at Bristol Maternity Hospital,
£9,240 a year and lists supermodel Sophie Anderton as a
by which time Peter had been promoted to area manager
former pupil.
for a hotel company and the couple had bought their first home, a semidetached house in Bristol.
1973
1982
Robin was born on July 28th at Bristol Maternity Hospital to Peter Gunningham and Pamela Dawkin-Jones.
The Gunninghams move into a home down the street, where they will stay until 1998.
ted, ningham
London 2005
a lead!
13
But we then found a school photograph, taken in 1989, of a bespectacled Robin Gunningham in which he shows a discernible resemblance to the man in the Jamaica photograph. Indeed, fellow pupils remember Robin, who was in Deans House, as being a particularly gifted artist.
Scott Nurse, an insurance broker who was in
Robin’s class, said: ‘He was one of three people in my year who were extremely talented at art. He did lots of illustrations. I am not at all surprised if he is Banksy. He was also in the house rugby team and I think he played hockey as well.’ In the rare interviews Banksy has given (always anonymously), the artist has acknowledged that it was while at school that he first became interested in graffiti.
it is hard to imagine banksy, the anti-authoritarian renegade, as a schoolboy wandering around the 17th century former monastery, with its upper and lower quadrangles and its prayers in the ancient cathedra
1983
1984
New York hip-hop group, the Rock Steady Crew, appeared at the Royal Variety Performance along with a number of graffiti artists. This was inspiration for artists like Massive Attack’s 3D and Nick Walker, now a designer who did the backdrop for films Eyes Wide Shut and Judge Dredd.
At age 11, Robin attends the renowned Bristol Cathedral School
Photograph of Banksy, Bristol 1989
y
al.
fellow pupils remember robin as being a particularly gifted artist. the photograph
15
1985 Bristol’s Arnolfini Gallery hosted an exhibition called Graffiti Art In Britain, at which artists sprayed paint directly on to the gallery walls and the hip hop band The Wild Bunch, which later became Massive Attack, played.
“
I came from a relatively small city in southern England. When I was about ten years old, a kid called 3D was painting the streets hard. I think he’d been to New York and was the first to bring spray painting back to Bristol. I grew up seeing spray paint on the streets way before I ever saw it in a magazine or on a computer. 3D quit painting and formed the band Massive Attack, which may have been good for him but was a big loss for the city. Graffiti was the thing we all loved at school. We did it on the bus on the way home from school. Everyone was doing it.”
but banksy’s interest in the arts is said to have caused a family rift.
1989
1990
Robin Gunningham leaves school at the age of 16.
72 graffiti artists are arrested by undercover police on criminal damage charges as part of Operation Anderson. Tom Bingle (a.k.a. Inkie), kown to be Banksy’s partner in crime, is among those arrested. There are no records of Gunningham being arrestor. Nor is there any record of Banksy being apprehended. He has confessed to become an expert at evading the police. His partner, Tim Bingle is now head of creative design at Sega.
Former neighbour Mr Hallett said: ‘The family was always very nice. I don’t know for sure but I think Robin was working as a graffiti artist. He worked for other people and would disappear for months on end. He was quite nomadic. ‘I would not go as far as to say he went off the rails, but there was some sort of rift in the family, probably because he didn’t turn out quite as they hoped. He just disappeared after he left home.’
graffiti & music
17
“
When I was 18, I spent one night trying to paint LATE AGAIN in big silver bubble letters on the side of a passenger train. British Transport Police showed up and I got ripped to shreds running away through a thorny bush. The rest of my mates made it to the car and disappeared so I spent over an hour hidden under a dumper truck with engine oil leaking all over me.
As I lay there listening to the cops
on the tracks, I realised I had to cut my painting time in half or give up altogether. I was staring straight up at the stencilled plate on the bottom of a fuel tank when I realised I could just copy that style and make each letter 3ft high.
I got home at last and crawled into
bed next to my girlfriend. I told her I’d had an epiphany that night and she told me to stop taking that drug ‘cos it’s bad for your heart.”
-Banksy in his book, Wall and Piece
18 minutes, Chalk Farm, London 2006
the signature style
19
1998 Gunningham is living in Easton with Luke Egan. Banksy collaborates with Inkie and other graffiti artists on a 400-yard Walls On Fire hoarding around Bristol’s Harbourside.
As our investigation continued, our inquiries
However, when we approached him, Egan initially
demonstrated again and again that the details of Robin
denied knowing and living with either Banksy or Robin
Gunningham’s life story dovetail perfectly with the
Gunningham, even though he had exhibited with the
known facts about Banksy.
former and the electoral roll had showed him living with
the latter. He eventually said: ‘I lived with a guy, with
By 1998 Robin Gunningham was living in Easton,
Bristol, with Luke Egan, who went on to exhibit with
Robin Gunningham. But …’
Banksy at Santa’s Ghetto, an art store which launched at
‘But you’re saying he wasn’t Banksy?’
Christmas 2001 in London’s West End.
‘Well, he wasn’t then. I lived with him ages ago.
I don’t think Banksy was around then anyway.’
Egan and Gunningham are believed to have left
the house when the owner wanted to sell it. Indeed, who wouldn’t regret throwing out work that would now probably fetch tens of thousands?
the details of robin gunningham’s life dovetail perfectly with the known facts about banksy
Bristol
denial
21
It was in 1998 that Banksy and Inkie collaborated with other graffiti artists on a 400-yard Walls On Fire hoarding around Bristol’s Harbourside. In local writer Steve Wright’s unofficial biography, Banksy’s Bristol: Home Sweet Home, Inkie said: ‘I helped Banksy organise the event but took a bit of a back seat and got pretty drunk on the day if I remember rightly.’
In 1999 Banksy painted the now famous Mild Mild
West sign, which shows a teddy bear with a Molotov cocktail in his hand, on a wall opposite Subway Records in Stokes Croft, Easton.
Jim Paine, founder of Subway Records, held the
ladder. ‘I knew Banksy from a while back, from the midto late Nineties when he was sharing a house in Easton, a couple of streets from me,’ he said in Wright’s book.
Mild Mild West, Bristol 1999
My guide: You could paint here — there are no guards in the watch towers, they do not come until the winter. Me: (Returning to the car after painting for 25 minutes) What’s so funny? Guide: (Laughing hysterically) Of course the guards are in the towers, they have the snipers with the walkie-talkies.
Bethlehem, 2005
denial
23
2000 Banksy’s first art exhibition in Bristol at the Severnshed restaurant.
‘I don’t even know his name. He has a number of pseudonyms he gives to people he’s working with, but at the time he only let his oldest mates in on everything. I presume I gave him cash [the proceeds of works he sold]. I could have written him a cheque without a name on it or I could have given him cash.’ Banksy moved to London around the turn of the millennium, once again at the After spending some months in London, Banksy returned
same time as a certain Robin Gunningham. Robin lived
to Bristol in February 2000 for his first art exhibition, at
in a flat in Kingsland Road, Hackney, East London, with
the Severnshed restaurant — a former boatshed designed
Jamie Eastman, who worked for Bristol’s Hombre record
by Brunel. His work sold out on the opening night.
label. Banksy drew a number of the record company’s
album covers.
‘It was the first time he had done work on canvas,’
curator Robert Birse said. ‘He didn’t have a clue how to make canvas stretch or prepare the artwork so we helped him with that side of it, but he had a very strong idea of what he wanted to do.’
i don’t even know his name. he has a number of pseudonyms he gives to people he’s working with
deception & exhibitions
25
2001 Unofficial exhibition in London
In 2001 Banksy had his first unofficial London exhibition at which he spray-painted 12 works on to the whitewashed walls of a tunnel in Rivington, Shoreditch. But it was his show Turf War, in July 2003, held in a warehouse just yards from Robin Gunningham’s flat, that put Banksy on the map. The exhibition included live pigs and a heifer sprayed with an Andy Warhol likeness. The Queen was depicted as a chimp. An animal rights activist chained herself to the railings in protest but the RSPCA gave its approval to the show.
That same year Banksy shuffled into the Tate
dressed as a pensioner and glued a picture to the wall — it stayed there for two-and-a-half hours and demonstrated against the Iraq War. He had arrived.
He has since sold works to singer Christina Aguilera,
who bought three, including a pornographic picture of Queen Victoria with a prostitute, for £25,000.
Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie blew £200,000 on
his art in 2006 — among the works was a £120,000 twist on a Manet painting in which a white family lunch under an umbrella watched by 15 starving Africans.
deception & exhibitions
27
2003 Banksy’s show ‘Turf War’ was held just yards from Gunningham’s flat. His first book, Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall is published.
for s he h
someone so anonymous, has a very high profile. Banksy’s works have also appeared in movies such as Children Of Men and Shoot ‘Em Up, and he has sold Space Girl & Bird, the artwork for Blur’s Think Tank album, to a bidder from America for a record £288,000.
For someone so anonymous he has a very high
profile. But where is Robin Gunningham, the mysterious figure whose whereabouts no one now knows but who crops up in numerous official records and always in the same place as Banksy, and at the same time? The man whose photograph was recognised by his former neighbour Anthony Hallett — although the same photograph was identified by several other sources as being of Banksy? The man who Camilla Stacey, along with several other contacts who wished to remain anonymous, told us actually was Banksy?
the trail runs out
29
it was time to find robin’s parents to see if they could help. His mother Pamela lives in a neat modern bungalow in
Our conversation with Peter Gunningham, who now lives
a village outside Bristol. After identifying ourselves, we
in a gated development in the suburb of Kingsdown, was
asked her if she had a son called Robin.
equally baffling. Mr Gunningham politely continued to
deny that his son was Banksy but his manner was almost
Her reaction was very odd. We showed her the Ja-
maica photograph and she was visibly startled, but said
playful. He refused to give us any information about
she didn’t recognise the man in the photograph, to whom
Robin. It was all very strange.
she bears more than a passing resemblance. We asked if
she could put us in touch with him.
Gunningham, one might have expected a reaction
of complete bewilderment. This did not seem to be
‘I’m afraid I don’t know how to get in contact with
Had the couple never heard of Banksy or Robin
him,’ she said.
the case.
So she did have a son called Robin? ‘No, I don’t. I
We then contacted Banksy’s public relations officer
don’t have a son at all.’
who, in the best Banksy tradition, neither confirmed nor
denied the story but promised to get back to us. At the
We asked her if she had any other children. ‘Yes, a
daughter.’ But no son and certainly not a son who went to Bristol Cathedral School?
‘No,’ she said, and went on to deny she was
Pamela Gunningham, insisting that the electoral roll must be incorrect.
time of going to press, we were still waiting to hear.
2005 Wall and Piece is published by Random House. Banksy’s version of primitive cave peinting showing a human figure hunting wildlife while pushing a shopping cart is found hanging in the British Museum. BBC reports that Banksy had painted 9 images on the Palestinian side of the Israeli West Bank barrier.
2004 Banksy’s third book, Cut it Out is published.
Deptford, London 2004
his parents
31
2010 Exit Through The Gift Shop, a film made by Banksy, debued on April 16th in the U.S.
2009 Banksy’s summer show is held in June in the Bristol Art Museum.
“
This is the first show I’ve ever done where taxpayers’ money is being used to hang my pictures up rather than scrape them off.”
given banksy’s long-standing success at covering the possibility that the trail we have been followi
his tracks, there is, of course, ing is a red herring, a complex set-up. so, who is he?
33
Southbank, London 2004
but if it is, it must be the most elaborate such ruse ever concocted. and if it is, where is robin gunningham?
so, who is he?
35
Barcelona Spain Berlin Germany Bristol England Dungeness England Glastonbury England Hastings England London England Napals Italy Palestine Boston U.S. Chicago U.S. Detroit U.S. Los Angeles U.S. New York U.S. New Orleans U.S. San Francisco U.S. Toronto Canada Utah U.S. Melbourne Australia Sydney Australia Mali
banksy has made his mark all over the world. where will he go next?
bristol map
37
banksy once told swindle magazine: ‘i have no interest in ever coming out. i figure there are enough self-opinionated a**holes trying to get their ugly little faces in front of you as it is.’
Archway, London 2004
so, who is he?
39
sources: Banksy, Wall and Piece http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1034538/Graffiti-artist-Banksy -unmasked---public-schoolboy-middle-class-suburbia.html http://www.bristol-street-art.co.uk/gallery/photo/mild-mild-west-banksy
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