Banks is back nine months after a zoo-themed graffiti orgy in London.
According to his Instagram account, the artist’s latest work is a lonely beacon with his trademark black leaning against a stucco wall, illuminating from his lantern room. Overlapping the lighthouse is the message “I want to be what you see in me” written in bold white font.
The painted shadows of the lighthouse are connected to towels on the sidewalk, but Banks offers no title or means to identify its location except for the image. Within two hours of publication, the image collected more than 300,000 likes.
Apart from the Madonna and children’s murals released last December, the lighthouse appears to be the first new work since Banksy’s 2023 Beast London campaign, a nine-day animal-themed mural scattered throughout the city. The elephant peeked from the Chelsea boarding window, monkeys waving on Shoreditch, a goat standing on the edge of a collapsed near the Key Bridge. There is now a rhino, passionately installing the image of the Nissan Micra on Walthamstow, a piece that sparks laughter and mourn before being defiled and removed.
As usual, Banksy has no clue as to what his latest work means. Instead, Instagram followers fill the gap, reading everything from criticisms of state surveillance to comments on media narratives to stereotypical creatures. A mural, a fish tank with police sentinel boxes, was praised as a cunning improvisation for Damien Hirst’s Formaldehyde Shark and will soon be listed in the New London Museum.
