Bansky claims new swimming fish artwork on police box

Banksy has confirmed he is behind a new swimming fish artwork which has appeared on a police sentry box in the City of London. It marks the seventh animal-themed piece the elusive street artist has claimed this week by posting a photo of the artworks to his Instagram at 1pm.

The artist appears to have used translucent spray paint on the glass windows to create the design, turning the sentry box into what looks like a giant fish tank. The artwork differs from Banksy’s previous dark silhouette images of a goat, elephants, monkeys, a wolf, pelicans and a cat which have popped up in various locations across London since Monday.

After it appeared, two City of London police officers arrived to examine the design before taking pictures from the outside of the police box. One officer told the PA news agency they were asked to check out the artwork after it was picked up on CCTV cameras.

In a statement to PA, detective chief inspector Andy Spooner for the City of London Police said: “We are aware of criminal damage to a City of London Police box in Ludgate Hill. We are liaising with the City of London Corporation who own the police box.”

The new variation in style caused speculation if the piece was a genuine Banksy, with a City of London worker who came to see the piece previously telling PA that they did not think it was him.

Three Banksy fans from the West Midlands also came to check out the new design after they travelled to London for the weekend to see all the new pieces across the city.

Before it was confirmed, one of the men said he was not sure if the fish design was by the Bristol-based street artist and that he had heard reports of a seal elsewhere which they were going to go and see. Another man in the group said if the fish artwork is Banksy, it is probably his favourite of the ones revealed this week.

A local resident was also amongst those to come visit the piece as she wanted to see it in case anything happened to it later in the day. The woman, who did not want to be named, said: “I walked up here yesterday and I don’t remember seeing it, I think I would have noticed it. I like it, it’s got a charm to it somehow. It’s not in your face, it’s quite subtle.”

On Saturday, the artist’s sixth piece – a stretching cat on an empty, distressed advertising billboard – was removed from its location in north-west London hours after it was revealed. Crowds booed as the piece in Cricklewood was dismantled by three men who said they were “hired” by a “contracting company” to take down the billboard for safety reasons.

A contractor, who only wanted to give his name as Marc, told PA they were going to take the board down on Monday and replace it, but the removal had been brought forward to Saturday in case someone “rips it down and leaves it unsafe”.

An officer at the scene told PA that the owner of the billboard has told police he will donate it to an art gallery. The cat design was the second piece to be removed during the week after a painting of a howling wolf on a satellite dish was taken off the roof of a shop in Peckham, south London, less than an hour after it was unveiled.

It was removed by three men, according to a witness, who told PA that he filmed them, which led to one of the men throwing his phone on a roof. A spokesman for Banksy told PA that the artist is neither connected to nor endorses the theft of the wolf design and that they have “no knowledge as to the dish’s current whereabouts”.

The first piece of graffiti in Banksy’s new animal-themed series, which was announced on Monday, is near Kew Bridge in south-west London and shows a goat with rocks falling down below it, just above where a CCTV camera is pointed.

On Tuesday, the artist added silhouettes of two elephants with their trunks stretched towards each other on the side of a building in the Chelsea area of west London.

This was followed by three monkeys looking as though they were swinging underneath a bridge over Brick Lane, near a vintage clothing shop in the popular east London market street, not far from Shoreditch High Street. The fifth design, of pelicans pinching fish from a London chip shop sign in Walthamstow, east London, was revealed on Friday.