Neither Gunningham, Banksy nor his representatives have ever publicly commented on the theory – to confirm or deny. That research, however, was delayed after Banksy’s lawyers contacted the university with concerns over how the study, called Tagging Banksy, would be used and promoted in the press.
In 2016, criminologists at Queen Mary University even used geographic profiling usually reserved for linking criminals to crimes to try to link Gunningham to works created by Banksy in London and Bristol.
The work in question was an illustrated album sleeve for Bristol-based ska band Mother Samosa's Oh My God It's Cheeky Clown, and bears resemblance to Banksy's earlier graffiti style. The rumour is so strong that, in 2018, an original work attributed to Robin Gunningham, thought to be the only one he put his name to, sold at auction for £4,000 (Dh18,500) – a fair amount for an otherwise unknown artist. Gunningham was said to have been a talented illustrator at school, often drawing cartoons, and indeed Banksy has confirmed that his love for drawing first manifested during his school years.Īn image taken in Jamaica of Gunningham with a spray can and stencils, widely circulated and suggested to be Banksy, is what first fueled speculation that he could be the elusive artist. Gunningham was born in 1973 in Yate, just outside of Bristol, and many former schoolmates say they believe him to be Banksy. There are many theories surrounding the identity of Banksy, but the most prominent one suggests that the artist is a man by the name of Robin Gunningham. The theories surrounding his identity Robin Gunningham In 2017, he opened Dismaland Bemusement Park in the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare, close to his home city of Bristol, which featured working rides sitting alongside classic Banksy artworks. It’s not the first time Banksy has taken his work off the wall. Matthew Horwood / Getty Imagesīanksy's work has taken him to Paris, New York and Bethlehem, where he opened the Walled Off Hotel in 2017, which directly faces the eight-metre-high concrete wall built by Israel to separate the Palestinian territories. Everyone was doing it.”Ī steward is seen outside Bansky's 'Dismaland' exhibition, which opened recently at a derelict seafront lido in Weston-Super-Mare, England. We did it on the bus on the way home from school. Graffiti was the thing we all loved at school.
“3D quit painting and formed the band Massive Attack, which may have been good for him but was a big loss for the city. I grew up seeing spray paint on the streets way before I ever saw it in a magazine or on a computer. I think he'd been to New York and was the first to bring spray painting back to Bristol. When I was about ten years old, a kid called 3D was painting the streets hard. In a 2006 (anonymous) interview with Swindle magazine, Banksy said: "I came from a relatively small city in southern England. It is still visible in the city today, alongside a number of his other works. The work depicts a teddy bear throwing a Molotov cocktail at three riot police, and was painted by the artist over the course of three days in broad daylight. His earliest large-scale mural is The Mild Mild West, painted in 1999 in Bristol's Stokes Croft. He later moved into more sophisticated and politicised works, before going on to become the street artist we know him as today. We know that Banksy is from the city of Bristol, United Kingdom, where he cut his teeth as a young artist spraying his tag across the city in the 1990s.