Man rumored to be infamous street artist Banksy hits back after being 'uncovered'
A man long speculated to be Banksy has told people to 'grow up and get a life' after the famed artist was said to have been 'uncovered'.
Banksy's identity has remained a mystery for decades, though, after an extensive investigation, Reuters reported that the famed artist is Robin Gunningham, a name which has been floating around for a while.
Police records show that a man with this moniker was arrested in September 2000 for defacing a billboard in New York City. It's believed that Gunningham now goes by David Jones, having allegedly legally changed their name in 2008.
Despite that, George Georgiou, a builder from North London, UK, has been previously mistaken for Banksy ever since he was snapped installing Perspex in London near one of Banksy's famed works.
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He sat down with the Daily Mail recently to dismiss the suggestion that he is the famous masked artist.
He told the outlet: "I'm not Banksy... It's really annoying, it's ridiculous and it's disturbing. The first day, it was a laugh. It's a bit of an old joke now."
In 2024, the Londoner was pictured at Banksy's tree mural; however, he says he was only there because the building on which it was painted was owned by his two sons.
While there was 'less reaction' at the time of the picture's release, it is 'just distrupting my day endlessly', adding: "It's just the day-to-day, every five minutes you pick up the bloody phone and it's just someone having a giggle.
"That's all it is. It's all harmless stuff, but when you're trying to get on with your life, it's just really annoying. It's just a pain in the butt."
A picture from 2008, also believed to be Gunningham, was previously published by the Mail on Sunday, though Banksy's manager had dismissed it.
Georgiou commented on people's assessment that the reported picture resembles him, adding: "Not really! The only nice thing is that they think I look like I'm 51."
Telling those who believe him to be Banksy to 'grow up' and 'get a life', he continued: "If Banksy were to be found, he wouldn't be standing there.
"I'm sure he is well enough endowed not to have to go there doing building work. He runs in, does what he does and then sods off and disappears. That's why no one knows who he is."
Georgiou then joked that he wished he were Banksy, as then 'no one would know who the f*** I am'.
Who is Banksy?
For three decades, the artist's identity has been elusive, and there have been tons of speculations about who he could be.
According to the BBC, Banksy is believed to have been born at Bristol Maternity Hospital in the 1970s, gaining notoriety when his sketches began appearing around Bristol in the early 1990s.
Aside from Gunningham, a few names have been put forward over the years, including singer-songwriter Robert Del Naja of 'Massive Attack', though both he and Banksy denied the rumours.
In fact, Del Naja told the Daily Mail that the artist was a 'mate' and he'd 'been to some of [Massive Attack's] gigs'. He even made an appearance in Banksy's 2010 mockumentary 'Exit through the Gift Shop', and the artist even wrote an intro for Del Naja's book '3D & the Art of Massive Attack'.
An even stranger contender was Neil Buchanan, who'd hosted the British children's TV show Art Attack, which went viral online, leading Buchanan to address it in 2020.
A statement on his website said 'Neil Buchanan ISN'T Banksy', adding: "We can confirm that there is no truth in the rumour whatsoever."
Other suggestions have been a Bristol art collective; meanwhile, in 2023, the BBC unearthed an interview with Banksy, who confirmed his name was 'Robbie'.
In Reuters' investigation, a source told the publication that a man named David Jones entered Ukraine in 2022, before numerous works of art appeared in the war-torn country. It's also believed that the passport used by Jones lists the same birthplace as Gunningham's.
When approached by Reuters, Banksy’s former manager, Stephen Lazarides, told them: "There is no Robin Gunningham. The name you've got I killed years ago."
Meanwhile, his company Pest Control said he 'has decided to say nothing', and his long-time lawyer, Mark Stephens, told Reuters that the artist 'does not accept that many of the details contained within your enquiry are correct'.
A timeline of the rise of Banksy:
1990s
Banksy's artwork starts cropping up around parts of Bristol, UK.
One of his first pieces in the city was a piece of graffiti mocking Vladimir Lenin. He used a stencil of the late dictator with a punk mohawk and hoop earring.
Arguably one of his first, well-known pieces was 'Mild Mild West', which depicted a teddy bear tossing a Molotov cocktail at policemen in riot gear.
2000s
It was the millennium when Banksy's famous stencils of monkeys and rats began appearing across London and other parts of the UK.
'Laugh Now' emerged in 2002 after the artist was commissioned by Ocean Rooms nightclub in Brighton. The artwork shows a chimp wearing a sandwich board that reads: "Laugh now, but one day we'll be in charge."
2002 also marked the release of Banksy's most famous graffiti art to date — 'Girl with Balloon'. This first appeared on London's Waterloo Bridge and later in Shoreditch.
Other notable pieces by Banksy in the 2000s include: 'Kissing Coppers', 'Grim Reaper', 'Flower Thrower', and 'One Nation Under CCTV'.
2010s and onwards
Banksy's 'Gorilla in a Pink Mask' was unveiled in 2011, only to be accidentally painted over. Fortunately, the bold piece of work, located in Eastville, Bristol, was restored shortly after.
It was also in the 2010s that the artist began moving his artwork even further out of London, to Bristol. In 2018, he dyed a piece called 'Season's Greetings' in Wales. This depicted the contents of a large trash can burning while a child stuck out their tongue to eat the ashes, mistaking them for snowflakes.
The following year, he did another festive piece in Birmingham. A homeless man was sleeping on a bench in the city, and Banksy graffiti-ed two reindeer painted to look like they were pulling the real public bench.
In 2020, during the Covid pandemic, Banksy graffiti of rats wearing surgical masks and using hand sanitiser appeared on an underground train carriage, which the artist shared on his Instagram page, writing: “London Underground – undergoes deep clean.”
Callum Jones