Man rumoured to have been Banksy addressed claims as ‘identity is unmasked’
Banksy could reveal himself tomorrow and half the internet would still say: “That’s exactly what Banksy would want us to think.”
But perhaps the biggest shock won’t be who, it’ll be finding out how he managed to carry that much spray paint without setting off airport security.
Whatever you think about him, if he is even a he, being able to keep the identity of an artist secret for so long takes some doing.
With graffiti drawings in London and Paris, to Bethlehem and Los Angeles, Banksy has kept Banksy a secret all around the world.
Advert
Apart from around 10 years ago when musician and DJ Goldie almost let the cat out of the bag.
Appearing on the Distraction Pieces podcast, Goldie said: "Give me a bubble letter and put it on a T-shirt and write Banksy on it and we're sorted. We can sell it now... No disrespect to Robert, I think he is a brilliant artist. I think he has flipped the world of art over."
Once he mentioned 'Robert', he paused before changing the subject.
This led people to believe that Banksy could be Robert Del Naja, a member of the Massive Attack band, a British trip-hop group formed in Bristol.
Del Naja, or 3D, is a mate of Goldie's and did work as a graffiti artist in the 80s.
However, the Massive Attack co-founder dismissed these claims during a concert in his hometown.
“We are all Banksy,” he told the crowd back in 2016.
“Rumors of my secret identity are greatly exaggerated,” he added to the Daily Mail. “It would be a good story but sadly not true. Wishful thinking I think.”
“He is a mate as well,” Del Naja said. “He’s been to some of the gigs. It’s purely a matter of logistics and coincidence, nothing more than that.”
More recently though, a years-long investigation from Reuters has suggested that it is a man named Robin Gunningham, who legally changed his name to David Jones in 2007.
Key evidence came from undisclosed US court records and police reports detailing his 2000 arrest for defacing a billboard in New York.
Immigration records also show that 'David Jones', who has Gunningham's birth date, entered Ukraine in October 2022, around the same time Banksy's murals started appearing.
Although Banksy's lawyer Mark Stephens has refuted the claims.
He said in a reply to the agency that his client 'does not accept that many of the details contained within [the] enquiry are correct'.
Stephens claimed the findings 'would violate the artist’s privacy, interfere with his art and put him in danger'.
Anish Vij